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REMARKS 



ON THE 



PAST AND ITS LEGACIES 



TO 



AMERICAN SOCIETY. 



WESTWARD THE STAR OF EMPIRE TAKES ITS WAV. 



By J. D. NOURSE. 



LOUISVILLE, KY: 

MORTON & GRISWOLD 

1847. 






THE LIBRARY! 

OF CONGRESS ! 

WASHINGTON 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1847, by 

J. D. NOURSE, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District of Kentucky. 



Morton & Griswold's Power Press. 



ADVERTISEMENT 



I venture with great diffidence to lay before the 
public the results of the thought and reading of 
some years, compressed by repeated revision into 
the smallest possible compass. It may seem pre- 
sumptuous for a young backwoodsman, who has 
written nothing to prepare the way for the present 
work, except a little romance, founded on the tra- 
ditions of his native State, to enter the lists with 
Schlegel, Guizot, and Macaulay ; but I trust my 
countrymen will give me a fair hearing. I am in- 
debted not only to the writers mentioned but to a 
host of others, as the auctioneers say, "too tedious 
to mention." 

Bardstown, Ky., ) 

Dec. 26th, 1846. > 



PREFATORY REMARKS. 



DESIGNED TO BE READ. 



In the prosecution of my favorite study of history, 
I have thought that I discerned two great events, 
towards which the movements of society and the 
arrangements of Providence have converged, in the 
ancient and modern worlds respectively: — the intro- 
duction of Christianity and the birth of the Amer- 
ican Democracy. In regard to the former, I have 
not the slightest claim to originality, and merely as- 
pire to present, in a somewhat striking and popular 
form, views long entertained by the profoundest of 
the continental philosophers ; but if I am right in the 
belief that American society is not only the last, but 
the noblest birth of Time, an American thinker, 
especially if he be a Protestant, is more favorably 
situated for taking just views of the philosophy of 
modern history, than one, however able and learned 
who has grown up in the shadow of those ancient 
institutions which have outlived their original uses. 

In the following pages I have attempted to trace 
the progress of society down to that remarkable 
epoch, when the best products of the Christian civil- 
ization were transplanted to the virgin soil of Amer- 
ica. I have reserved that stirring and productive 



VI PREFACE. 

period, extending from the commencement of our 
struggle with England to the end of Napoleon's em- 
pire, for a subsequent work, if the success of the 
present should warrant another and similar under- 
taking. 

The reader will soon discover that the nature of 
this work precludes the necessity of frequent refer- 
ence to historical details. Whenever I have made 
a statement in illustration of a principle, I have been 
careful to satisfy myself of its accuracy by consult- 
ing the best authorities. 

In a few of the first pages following, which were 
written some years ago, the reader may find some 
resemblance to the peculiar style and topics of Mr. 
Carlyle. I confess that I love him so much, that 
were I to meet him knowingly in the streets of the 
great Babel, I would certainly astound the Cock- 
neys, by giving him the hearty salutation of a back- 
woodsman, without waiting for an introduction. 



THE CROSS 



THE CROSS 



History is the first of sciences. In its widest sense k 
may be said to include every other science, — all that has 
been preserved of what has been said, done and written 
by man since the foundation of the world. 

There are two great revelations of God, and of the high- 
est truth, the revelation of nature and the revelation of history. 

The Bible is a part of the historic revelation, but by far 
the most important part, for it gives us the key of the zvhole. 
The records of Christianity furnish us with a central and 
lofty point of view, from which we may marshall around us 
the leading facts of universal history in such order, that we 
may hope to deduce a consistent and intelligible theory of 
the existence of man upon earth, and humbly trace the 
majestic footsteps of Eternal Providence. 

Indeed our opinions respecting the Christian records will 
determine our views of history at large. They will deter- 
mine whether we shall regard the movements of society, 
and the revolutions of empires, as a mere aimless tragicom- 
edy, played off for the amusement of the higher Powers, or 
as a solemn and mysterious evolution of a mighty purpose 
and a lofty destiny. 

A melancholy thought strikes us at the threshold. Of all 
the vast materials of history, of all the sayings and doings, 
manners and institutions, the moral and intellectual manifes- 
tations, in short, of the generations that have gone before us, 
what an infinitely small part has been preserved. Even 
since mankind emerged from the cloud of mythical tradition 



10 THE CROSS. 

into the clear light of authentic history, their annals have 
done little more than mark the bubbles that have floated upon 
that fathomless stream of life, which, issuing from the great 
deep of eternity past, is lost in the darkness of eternity to 
come. 

If we would trace to their sources the mightiest manifes- 
tations of spiritual life, language, religion, philosophy, 
government and the arts, we are carried beyond the feeble 
illumination of profane history into the twilight of an almost 
impenetrable antiquity. A few chapters in Genesis comprise 
all that is known to us of those mighty ages, the time-defying 
relics of whose unparallelled civilization startle the travel- 
ler in the silent deserts of Upper Egypt, in the "marble 
wilderness" of Syria, the jungles of India, and the cyclopean 
ruins of Greece and Italy. "What is known of the spiritual 
manifestations of the past, bears but a small proportion to 
what has forever perished from the memory of man and the 
records of history. 

Forever, did we say, and is all that has been buried under 
the "wrecks of time " irretrievably lost 1 ? No! Not thus, 
we are persuaded, does God deal with his rational creatures. 
There is a volume and a recording angel before His throne, 
and in the light of that ineffable Presence, the bulletin of the 
battle between Heaven and Hell, of which earth is the field 
and Eternity the prize, will one day be published to the 
Universe. No conquest ever made from the empire of ig- 
norance, sin and misery, however small, — no victory ever 
gained over evil passions, however obscure, — no dark and 
fearful struggle with the temptations of the world and the 
despotism of Nature, shall go unchronicled. No tear of 
compassion or sorrow has ever fallen unheeded by the Father 
of us all. No great and heroic deed, — no winged words of 
light or hope or consolation, though forgotten on earth, shall 
ever be lost from the memories of Eternity. 



THE CROSS. 11 

Yet the comparatively small part of universal history which 
is known to us now, is an unfathomable mine, and rich in the 
ore of thought. A glory breaks out from the tombs of de- 
parted generations, and amid the chaos of facts and the 
ruins of empires, are many bright points of light in the past, 
that may serve to illumine the present and the future. We 
will endeavor to collect some of these scattered rays, and if 
we should discover nothing absolutely new, we may at least 
refresh and deepen the impression of those old, but not the 
less glorious truths, which are the wholesome food of spirit- 
ual life. 

And here I beg leave to enter my protest against what 
may be called the zm-historical or awta-historical philosophy 
so fashionable at the present day, especially among the culti- 
vators of the physical sciences, a philosophy which is at once 
the offspring and parent of a shallow scepticism. This 
school of illuminati and radical reformers, looking too exclu- 
sively at the errors and imperfections that have incrusted the 
organized forms, in which the great principles of moral life 
and social progress have from time to time taken up their 
residence, have brought themselves to regard the Past, as an 
inextricable maze of weak self-delusion, or wholesale jug- 
glery. 

If deep and life-giving realities, which have given birth to 
the poetry, chivalry, and religion of the "fervent days of 
old," have been mixed up with error and superstition, our 
philosophers conclude that all these things have been founded 
in delusion or imposture. To save themselves the trouble of 
separating the pure bullion of truth from the alloy with 
which it has passed current among masses of men, they has- 
tily consign the whole to the limb of exploded chimeras. 
According to this philosophy nature is a machine, life is the 
the motion of particles, history is a tissue of folly, selfishness 
and priestcraft. 



12 THE CROSS. 

The favorite themes of these lights of the world, at least 
of the most thorough-going and consistent among them, are 
the folly and ignorance of believing ages, the "march of 
intellect," and the progress of the physical sciences, which 
are to regenerate the species, revolutionize our views of 
man and his destiny, and disenchant life of all those beauti- 
ful delusions of our benighted fathers, which have inspired 
self-devotion, moral heroism and hopes that grasp at infinity. 

This spirit is manifestly incompatible with any definite re- 
ligious belief, which must be founded upon historical 
evidence, corroborated by moral intuitions. Some of our 
philosophers, it is true, may preserve a prudent and worldly 
acquiescence in the religion of their country or their neigh- 
bors, which is far less worthy of respect than earnest inquir- 
ing scepticism. Others may regard religion as an useful 
humbug, which wise men should tolerate until society is 
prepared to do without it, but this capitulation with error is 
scouted by the higher class of sceptics, who hold that truth 
alone is good, and that no system radically false can be 
productive of any real or lasting benefit to mankind. 

The same spirit, brought to bear directly upon historical 
inquiry, has given birth to what may be called the " humbug" 
philosophy of history, of which Hume is perhaps the great- 
est representative, and which, by making a great show of 
wisdom and impartiality, has been the source of more fallacy 
and injustice, than all the most passionate disquisitions of the 
most enthusiastic partizans. In this school of history, every 
great, but irregular nature, full of fiery earnestness about 
matters with which the writer happens to have no sympathy, 
is a hypocrite, an impostor or a fanatic; every half enlight- 
ened but still glorious manifestation of the divinest part of 
man's nature is sneered at, as an outburst of silly enthusiasm, 
or a trick of selfish ambition. 

Contempt for the past is moral desolation. It excludes 



THE CROSS. 13 

God and His Providence from history, saps the foundation 
of religion and tends to bring into doubt almost everything 
which exalts and embellishes society. It is a dreary, soul- 
chilling, practical Atheism. 

Take the following illustration of our views upon this 
subject: 

Nowhere else in the annals of mankind are the traces of 
a beneficent Providence so clearly to be seen as in the histo- 
ry of the Christian religion. All the vast movements and 
revolutions of the ancient nations converge to one mighty 
purpose, the introduction of Christianity. It has been the 
soul of modern society, the most efficient agent in civilizing 
mankind, the main life-bearing stem upon which has been 
engrafted every thing beautiful and glorious in the vigorous, 
progressive and ever expanding civilization of the Christian 
nations. According to the "humbug" philosophy, either 
the Divinity concerns himself not with the affairs of his 
creatures, or he has chosen as the means of conferring his 
greatest blessings upon them, a boundless scheme of elabo- 
rate imposture. 

Contempt for the past, especially in relation to civil con- 
cerns, is an error to which, from obvious causes, American 
society is peculiarly exposed, and which it therefore becomes 
the duty of the American writer to combat. We are in little 
danger of falling into that opposite extreme, which in Europe 
takes the form of high conservatism, and with desperate 
perversity throws itself into direct opposition to the resist- 
less tendencies of modern society. From the nature of the 
case, toryism can never take deep root in American soil, and 
it is idle to aim our blows at an imaginary foe, while a real 
and portentous tendency threatens the extinction of all rev- 
erence for the Past, and with it all of that ennobling class of 
emotions, which are allied to such reverence as their parent 
£tock. This tendency is fostered by the grovelling dema- 



14 THE CROSS. 

goguism that curses our country : a moral pestilence more to 
be dreaded by a people than the greatest physical calamities. 

Popular sycophants would fain make us believe that polit- 
ical wisdom and the great principles of liberty, like potatoes 
and tobacco, are indigenous to American soil; and some are 
absurd enough to contend for what they call an American 
education, which shall cut us off from the past and cancel 
all our obligations to the old world. But no nation ever 
became great by this process, nor ever will. We must re- 
collect that, if we can see a little farther than those who have 
gone before us, we stand upon a mental pyramid piled up by 
the labors of countless generations; that it is our business to 
carry it still farther towards heaven, not to look down with 
scorn upon the great works of our predecessors, or become 
little in the contemplation of our own greatness. Other na- 
tions may still have the remnants of old abuses to demolish, 
our task is not to destroy but to preserve and build up. We 
have nothing to spare of the legacies of the past. 

The shallow unhistorical illuminism of radical destructives 
and materialist philosophers is an evil which with many com- 
pensating benefits has been bequeathed to mankind by that 
tremendous collision between the new and the old, the 
French Revolution. Or to speak with more precision, it is 
the offspring of that powerful and pervading tendency of 
modern society, of which the French revolution was the 
mightiest and most destructive outburst. In the warfare 
which freedom of inquiry, and civil equality on the one 
hand, have waged against venerable authority, and arbitrary 
privilege on the other, the tremendous assaults, which have 
been made upon ancient institutions that have outlived their 
original uses, have not always spared the truth and good 
which those institutions were designed to perpetuate. 

The human mind can entertain but one passion at a time, 
sufficiently overruling and intense to effect great changes in 



THE CROSS. 15 

society, and revolutionary ardor has been so busy with the work 
of demolition, that it is not wonderful that many should turn 
their backs upon the pasty forgetful of its greatness, and their 
own obligations to it, and look forward to the future with 
boundless hopes, and chimerical schemes for the radical re- 
generation of society. Yet there is nothing more certain, 
than that no moral or political organization wholly severed 
from the past can live. We may repair dilapidated institutions 
from time to time, and adapt them to the new exigencies of 
society ; but we must preserve the old foundations, the great 
principles, or our structures will not stand the test of time 
and experience. It is the order of Providence, that the new 
should be evolved from the old in such a manner, that the 
life and soul of the one should be gradually transfused into 
the other. Great revolutions may seem to interrupt this order 
for a time, but after the earthquake has rolled away, the 
stream resumes its former channel, only clearer, broader, freer 
from obstructions than before. "We may borrow an image 
from Scandinavian Poetry, and compare the progressive de- 
velopment of man's destinies upon earth to a mighty tree. 
We may prune it and lop the sapless branches, but we must 
not forget that the most beautiful flowers of modern civiliza- 
tion, the most noblest fruits which have ripened in the blaze 
of modern science, have drawn their vital sap from broad 
roots buried in the remotest antiquity, through a mighty trunk 
whose growths are eras, and boughs that have battled with 
the storms of revolutions. 

We need not hope to understand any important portion of 
history thoroughly, without attaining some elevated point 
which will give us a view of the whole. It is not a line but 
a web, and each part is intertangled with every other part in 
the vast and intricate texture of Providential arrangements. 
Yet by collating facts far separated in time and space, and 
discerning their relations to each other, and to the evolution 



16 THE CROSS. 

of the vast plans of Eternal Providence, we may hope to 
frame a general theory of historical philosophy, which will 
collect the scattered rays that break out in distant ages and 
different quarters of the globe, and reflect the concentrated 
light thus gathered from the whole upon each successive 
portion, as it passes in review before us. I am far from sup- 
posing myself equal to so vast and difficult an undertaking. 
I only hope to throw out a few suggestions which may facili- 
tate the solution of this greatest of philosophical problems. 

Without such generalization, we should be unable to catch 
the true spirit and import of any of the great movements of 
society, from those meagre delineations of public transactions, 
which make up the greater part of our histories, and exhibit 
only proximate or occasional causes. We mark the move- 
ments of armies, the doings of politicians and the intrigues 
of courts, things which float upon the surface of society, while 
the real fountains of moral and intellectual life are hidden far 
below in its quiet and silent depths. 

Every one knows, that, in the natural world, the mightiest 
results are brought about by the steady operations of quiet 
and unobtrusive agencies. The sudden storm at sea may 
mingle their spray of billows with the clouds of heaven ; but 
in a few hours all traces of the tempest's rage have vanished, 
while, in the blue ocean above, the stars in quiet beauty wheel 
in their everlasting courses, impelled by a power unseen, un- 
heard and only known by its stupendous effects. 

The same is true of the moral world. But this is a trite 
theme and I will not dwell upon it. I cannot, however, refrain 
from noticing a beautiful illustration of the thought in the 
Hebrew scriptures, notwithstanding it has often been refer- 
red to by other writers. It is one of the most brilliant gems 
in that exhaustless mine of divine philosophy and inspired 
poetry. 

The Prophet sat upon Mount Horeb, waiting for a visita- 



THE CROSS 17 

tion from on High. A storm-wind swept through the moun- 
tain passes, but the Lord was not in the wind; an earthquake 
rent the rocks, but the Lord was not in the earthquake ; a 
fire darted through the clefts, and roared among the moun- 
tain pines, but the Lord was not in the fire; but there came 
a still small voice, like soft music from afar, and the thrilling 
frame and kindling soul of the Prophet acknowledged the 
presence and power of the Eternal Spirit. 

When the natural philosopher discerns in a multitude of 
facts phenomena essentially the same, though to a greater 
or less degree modified by peculiar circumstances, he intui- 
tively refers them to certain invariable laws or intrinsic pro- 
perties of matter, and goes to work to find out the causes 
that have varied the results in particular instances. We see 
no reason why the same procedure should not be adopted 
in historical investigations ; for in like manner, while wed is- 
cern marked peculiarites in the spiritual developments of 
different nations, there are certain great features of life and 
principles of action which run through all ages and all tribes 
and kindreds of the earth, that have attained to any consider- 
able height of knowledge and refinement, or played any im- 
portant part in history. 

Nations have left their original seats and wandered to 
distant portions of the globe ; empires have fallen and their 
treasures of art and knowledge have been buried beneath 
their ruins ; the world has been a scene where the demons 
of lust, ambition and revenge have rioted in crime and 
bloodshed ; yet amid all these mighty changes, and world- 
wide confusions, certain phenomena have been manifested 
by every age and nation of which any monuments have been 
preserved. 

Among these universal facts, are the belief of a First 
Cause, and a recognition of his right to prescribe the laws 
of our being; an ideal more or less distinct of the specific 



18 THE CROSS. 

perfection of man and society, and a sense of actual short- 
coming and moral debasement; attempts by self-immolation 
and sacrifices of other victims to avert the penalties of the 
Divine law,, not only in the present but a future life, and 
finally a perpetual struggle between the animal and selfish 
passions and that higher part of our strange nature which 
links us to God and Eternity. Nowhere has the human 
soul been so completely darkened, — at no time have its finer 
chords been so entirely unstrung, but that through the up- 
roar of strife, the curses of rage and the shrieks of despair, 
some gushes of heavenly music have been heard from time 
to time, which have brought solace from above to the pil- 
grim and stranger upon earth. 

In the great tree of moral life there are the main stem of 
the primitive revelation, growing up through the Hebrew 
theocracy to its glorious maturity in Christianity ; the almost 
sapless branches of Chinese philosophy, and Mahommedan 
deism ; the rich foliage and flowers of Indian and Grecian 
mythology ; the mossy, storm-riven boughs of Scandinavian 
poetry and Celtic druidism ; but withal its roots are far down 
in Eternity and its top reaches to Heaven. 

The materialist, the despiser of the Past, regards these 
great moral facts, which have lived through all the vicissi- 
tudes of savage and cultivated society, as mere chimeras or 
the fever-dreams of a long night of ignorance and supersti- 
tion, which the light of modern science is to put to flight 
forever. According to him this modern science must be a 
melancholy business. It disrobes the world of the beauties 
which Poetry has stolen from the gardens of Paradise, and 
represents nature not as a kind, though sometimes stern 
mother, rearing the sons and daughters of immortality, but 
as a blind monster sitting on a pile of skulls and devour- 
ing her own children. 

That profoundest philosophy which recognizes the Divine 



THE CROSS. 19 

and imperishable in man, always appears first in the forms 
of poetry and music, twin sisters and the hand-maids of reli- 
gion. It is a remarkable fact, that in the earliest periods of 
civilization, in the robust and fervid youth of great nations, 
Poetry, that divine melody of thought and words, is always 
the first language of the newly awakened intellect. Moral 
reproof and instruction and even the laws of the heroic ages 
were embodied in the forms, and vitalized by the spirit of 
Poetry. 

As civilization advances, and the cold abstractions of sci- 
ence take the place of the life-like creations of the imagina- 
tion, Poetry withdraws herself more and more from the 
domain of the understanding. But though a high state of 
intellectual cultivation more clearly defines the respective 
boundaries of science and poetry, it is by no means neces- 
sarily unfavorable to the latter, as many have supposed. 

It is true that rude ages allow greater freedom to the ex- 
cursions of the imagination. But what is lost in one respect, 
is gained in another. Poetry more and more hemmed in 
by reality, finds in reality new and inexhaustable resources. 

The vulgar and trivial details of actual life are apt to 
blunt our perceptions of its greatness. Yet man, whatever 
the materialists may think about the matter, is not merely a 
beast but also a god, and this world is not altogether a sty 
but also a temple of the Divinity, paved with the bones of 
the dead, but roofed by the starry dome, and peopled by 
beautiful and awful mysteries. The bright dreams of youth, 
and the thoughtful sadness of maturer years; the deep com- 
munings of the soul with nature and with God ; the fond 
loyalty which cherishes the memories of heroes and great 
benefactors of mankind; self-sacrificing patriotism which 
attaches to the idea of country an infinite import, and sacred 
obligations ; rapt devotion, whether it recognize the Divine 
Presence in the Gothic Cathedral, amid the forest aisles, or 



20 THE CROSS. 

cn the sounding sea-shore, — what are all these things but the 
rising undulations of that deepest part of our mysterious na- 
ture, in which are the fountains of poetry and religion. 

If we imagine a rational creature upon a level with the 
highest of our species to reach the maturity of his powers in 
another state of being, and then to have all his perceptions 
and sensibilities suddenly opened upon this world in any of 
its brightest or most fearful aspects, what deep thoughts, 
what childish wonder, love, or awe, would fill his whole 
soul ! The poetical temperament preserves in a greater or 
less degree this childlike freshness, which custom withers in 
other men, and by mysterious affinities draws to itself the 
poetry of life and nature from the alloy of common place 
ingredients. 

It is unquestionably the greatest triumph of art to idealize 
the present ; for distance either in time or space renders the 
materials of poetry more pliant. Through the same mists 
which conceal from us the vulgar and trivial details, the 
grander features of the scene loom up into shapes of beauty 
or terror. Campbell's illustration of this thought will occur 
to every reader. If "distance" "robes the mountain in its 
azure hue," it also leaves the imagination free to rove 
through shadowy and sequestered dells or fairy regions, be- 
yond the blue summits that seem to prop the heavens. 

This fact discloses the true secret of the highest poetical 
effect, and throws much light on the nature of poetry in gen- 
eral. If we wish to exalt the actual into the ideal, we must 
take care not to fetter the imagination by such clear and 
sharp outlines as leave no room for vague associations and 
undefined but powerful emotions, which transcend the limits 
of the partial present and grasp at the infinite whole. Fan- 
tasy must be set free from the chains of the actual. 

But what, it may be asked, has all this to do with the phi- 
losophy of history ] Much, as I hope will be seen hereafter, 



THE CROSS. 21 

if the reader has patience to follow the train of thought 
which has led me to the views that I entertain upon that 
subject. There are strong affinities between our opinions 
upon such subjects, that at first sight seem to have no direct 
connection. Our views of history must depend in a great 
measure upon our notions of the nature of man and the pur- 
poses of his manifestations. 

If man be a machine, and all the purposes of his existence 
be limited to the present world, then poetry is simply an 
illusion, and a pernicious one, for those bodying forth of the 
ideal which fill the soul with an infinite love, or grief, or ter- 
ror, are the dreams of a distempered imagination, and blind 
men to their present and real good by fostering vague but 
glorious anticipations which must be finally disappointed. 
For, consciously or unconsciously, the poetical temperament 
links everything finite and perishable with the infinite and 
imperishable, and our little life here with the boundless and 
everlasting existence that awaits us. Whatever form poetry 
may take, and whatever may be the nature of the materials 
which it draws from the actual world, its essential inspira- 
tion is the ineradicable desire of the human soul for a wider, 
a more beautiful, a more powerful existence than the present. 

When the Poet is destitute of religious faith, the mighty 
cravings of his soul, and a vivid sense of the frightful dis- 
crepancy between the aspirations and the supposed destiny 
of man, may eat into his own heart, tear asunder his whole 
natuie, and fever into despair, madness or suicide. A hap- 
pier creed may overarch life with the rainbow of hope, and 
pour over nature the light of eternity. In either case, the 
poet filled with the ideal and that infinite love and awe which 
only the ideal can inspire, becomes the unconcious prophet 
of a deeper and mightier truths than the boasted deductions of 
science. Even in science no great thing was ever done by 
a man who had not a spice of poetry in him. 



22 THE CROSS. 

As will appear more fully in the progress of our inquiry, 
those branches of art and literature, which strive to embody 
the aspirations of man in forms of ideal beauty or power, 
have performed a very important part in human culture. It 
is therefore perfectly consistent for our philosophers, who 
look upon history as little better than a tissue of delusion, 
selfishness and imposture, to regard poetry as a pleasant 
cheat, which may serve to amuse a vacant hour. 

Religion is the union of the highest philosophy with the 
highest poetry. Philosophy has to do with substances, quali- 
ties, relations, all which are objects of pure intellect, not of 
passion ; but when those substances and qualities are em- 
bodied or manifested in sensible forms, such as may excite 
love, terror or admiration, they come within the province of 
Poetry. Religion is the recognition of God, the central sun 
of all truth, in two modes ; first, philosophically as an absolute 
essence, with certain qualities and relations ; secondly, poetical- 
ly, as manifested in the various forms of life and beauty around 
us, which call forth our love, admiration or reverence, which 
is the union of the other two feelings, in proportion as they 
rise in the scale of being towards the Infinite. In idolatry 
the poetical element of religion predominates, almost to the 
exclusion of the philosophical. In cold, absolute theism the 
exact reverse takes place. Christianity alone has effected in 
the God-man, our Saviour, a happy and perfect union of 
philosophy and poetry. 

It will not be out of place to remark just here, that all the 
poetry, which has made any considerable contributions to 
the progress of society in christian ages and nations, has had 
a vital connection with the christian religion. This will ap- 
pear more fully hereafter. Indeed the history of Christianity 
itself, including the life and death of its Divine Founder, the 
moral heroism of its martyrs and apostles, and the long war- 
fare which it has waged against ignorance, sin and misery, is 



THE CROSS. 23 

a mighty epic, of which God is the author ; and the refine- 
ments of chivalry, the triumphs of art and the glories of sci- 
ence are the episodes. Religion has directly or indirectly 
been the source of that poetry of action, which has shed a 
never-dying glory over the great and stirring periods of mod- 
ern history. 

It is obvious that we use the term Poetry in its general 
sense of passionate recognition of all beautiful, glorious and 
sublime things, manifested, not only in verse, painting, sculp- 
ture, architecture, but any thing which ennobles man, embel- 
lishes life, or refines society, provided it can be embodied in 
sensible forms, or associated with images more or less distinct. 
Not only the greatest works of art, but the finest traits and 
noblest triumphs of civilization, are manifestation of that 
divine and perennial spirit of Poetry, without which, life 
would be a poor despicable round of sordid cares and ani- 
mal gratifications. 

In this connection I will venture a few thoughts on the 
origin and philosophy of civilization in general. 

Civilization originallv meant the condition of civil society, 
which in the Latin mind was indissolubly associated with 
cities. The term as used by modern writers is more com- 
prehensive. I will define civilization to be that state of so- 
ciety, which surrounds the individual members thereof with 
circumstances positively propitious to the development of 
the higher and finer qualities of human nature, — the moral 
and intellectual faculties, the social sympathies and the poet- 
ical sentiments. 

There are various modes of awakening the dormant capa- 
bilities of a barbarous people. All those high properties 
that raise man above other animals, and the manifestations of 
which distinguish refinement from barbarism, and the culti- 
vated from the coarse, are so closely linked together in " the 
electric chain with which we are darkly bound," that the liv- 



24 THE CROSS. 

ing fire from heaven applied to any part of the concatenation, 
will soon vibrate through the whole. There is a deep mean- 
ing in that old legend, that cities were built by the lyre of 
Amphion. 

There is an internal and an external civilization ; and the 
latter is the natural and necessary product of the former. 
To illustrate my meaning, suppose the most cultivated people 
in Paris to be transported into the depths of an American 
forest, and their parlors and libraries, and places in the sci- 
entific institutes and galleries, and churches and courts of 
justice and legislative assemblies of the metropolis of Euro- 
pean civilization, to be filled by a band of Blackfeet Indians. 
The Parisians would soon create around them the external 
circumstances of civilized life, while the Blackfeet, unless im- 
proved by the example of their remaining neighbors, would 
suffer the monuments of a refinement which they could not 
appreciate to fall into decay and ruin. We are to distinguish 
then between the state of mind — what I have called the inter- 
nal civilization, — of the individuals who compose a society, 
and those institutions and other external circumstances, in 
which the poetical sentiments, the moral and intellectual 
powers and the social tendencies manifest their supremacy 
over the mere animal and selfish propensities. 

When, by any means, the barbarian, to whom we may 
apply Plato's definition of man, "a two legged animal with- 
out feathers, " has been thoroughly aroused from his moral 
stupidity, and rendered sensible of the advantages of civiliza- 
tion, the internal change soon manifests itself in a thousand 
forms of external improvement ; he begins to rise above 
mere animalism, and seeks to embellish his existence by a 
variety of beautiful and graceful things, which shall incessant- 
ly speak to him of a higher destiny than he ever dreamed of 
in his former state cf brutal degradation. He, who once 
regarded woman as the mere slave of appetite and devour- 



THE CROSS. 25 

ed, like a wolf, the flesh which he has just snatched from the 
reeking flank of an ox, to disguise the grossness of sen- 
sual gratifications with the flowers of sentiment and the 
effusions of cultivated intellect. The scanty covering of 
skins is exchanged for decent or elegant attire, and the bark 
wigwam gives place to the stately edifice. Everywhere a 
sense not of utility alone, but of beauty, harmony, magnifi- 
cence, is manifesting itself. 

The social sympathies, strengthened and expanded by 
more enlightened views of reciprocal wants and advantages, 
extend to larger and larger masses of men, and become the 
bond of cohesion in great communities. All men are social 
or gregarious, but a very small society and a very slight 
bond of connection will suffice for the purposes of savage 
life. The progress of refinement creates new wants, widens 
the circle of mutual interests, and renders men more and 
more sensible of the necessity and advantages of association. 
It is incessantly adding to the number and strength of the 
ties which bind men together. 

The social tendency may be so strong as to prevent a free 
development of individuality. Such a state of society may 
be vigorous for a time, while external pressure calls forth 
its energies, but it will eventually dwarf the mind and bring 
about a state of spiritual torpor or death. Where the mor- 
al element is feeble, and the poetical sentiments rather 
disguise than restrain the animal propensities, we have that 
state of civilization described by Burke, in which " vice loses 
half its guilt by losing all its grossness," and which nothing 
but an extraordinary interposition of Providence can save 
from utter destruction. For habitual immorality gradually 
clouds the intellect and blunts the finer sensibilities, so that 
at length even the thin disguise of decency is thrown off, 
and man descends to the level of the brute. This must be 
3 



26 THE CROSS. 

the case wherever there is not moral life enough in some 
portion of the society to resist the progress of corruption. 

If, when the animal and selfish passions have been subju- 
gated by the poetical and social tendencies, these last in their 
turn are subordinated to the moral faculties, nourished into 
vigorous life by the wholesome food of everlasting truth, and 
individuality, in other words the spontaneous energy of free 
minds, is not cramped by despotism or social unity, we may 
look for an onward and upward progress to which no limits 
can be assigned. No civilization can be vigorous or pro- 
gressive, in which the whole complex nature of man does 
not have fair play, in which every faculty does not find its 
appropriate objects. 

It is thought by some that man was originally savage, and 
gradually rose by his own unaided exertions into civilization 
and intellectual refinement. This theory, besides its intrinsic 
improbability, is unsupported by a single fact in history. — 
On the contrary, all the facts go to show that savages never 
could have the least desire or conception of a higher condi- 
tion than their own, until by some means they have been 
brought into contact with civilized people, and subjugated 
by their religion, their arts or their arms. Commerce is an 
important agent in diffusing a civilization already in existence, 
but the intercourse of savage tribes is not one of mutual im- 
provement, but of mutual destruction. 

There is not a solitary example in all history, of the spon- 
taneous growth of that knowledge and refinement which 
distinguish the civilized from the savage state. We may 
indeed assume without the shadow of proof, that in those 
few cases in which impenetrable darkness rests upon the 
origin of a very imperfect civilization, which looks very much 
like the remnant of something better, as in Mexico and Peru, 
it must have sprung up among themselves. If this assump- 
tion were well founded, we would surely have had some 



THE CROSS. 27 

examples of spontaneous development within the range of 
authentic history, embracing, as it does, a period of nearly 
six thousand years, and many savage nations of the highest 
capabilities. 

Those very tribes that have shown the greatest susceptibility 
of improvement, when brought in contact with civilization, 
have existed for ages on ages in barbarism, undisturbed by 
the least desire or conception of an higher condition. Wher- 
ever we can trace the arts and knowledge of civilized life to 
their beginnings, we find them uniformly exotics, transplant- 
ed from some more favored clime, and usually passing 
through a long period of feeble and doubtful growth, exposed 
to the rudest blasts, before they have taken lasting root in the 
new soil. 

The truth is, that barbarism is unmitigated animalism, a 
sort of spiritual slumber from which the latent capabilities 
will never awaken, until some external stimulus be applied. 
Man seems to be subject to a moral gravitation that weighs 
him down to the " vile dust from which he sprang." Every 
thing which ennobles and exalts him, is an up-hill business. 
He has eagle wings, yet he would contentedly fold them at 
his side and feed upon the garbage of earth, did not external 
or Divine culture raise his eyes towards Heaven, and imp 
his lazy pinions for the upper skies and the free mountain top. 

There are instances of nations losing, in a great measure, 
their social superiority by moral corruption, by the deadening 
grasp of despotism or the storms of intestine strife and for- 
eign invasion, but not a solitary example of spontaneous 
civilization. 

Our modern refinement is nothing more than a reconsolid- 
ation, with additions and improvements, of those remnants of 
the magnificent civilization of Rome, which were sheltered 
by the Church, from those northern tempests that over- 
whelmed the Empire. From Rome, we may trace the 



28 THE CROSS. 

streams of art and knowledge, through Greece, Asia Minor 
and Phoenicia, to the valley of the Nile and the plains of 
Chaldea. Here the lights of profane history desert us, and 
without the Hebrew Scriptures, we should be left in utter 
darkness. 

At the very earliest period of which any authentic memo- 
rials have survived, navigation seems to have been more 
extensive and adventurous, than it ever was afterwards down 
to the time of Vasco de Gama and Columbus. Egypt was 
the seat of a refined and intellectual people, whose monu- 
ments still strike the traveller with astonishment. Babylon 
sat upon the Euphrates, the queen of nations, with her hun- 
dred gates of brass, her temjDles, towers and palaces, and the 
Chaldean sages had already numbered every star that sparkled 
in the oriental heavens. 

Through the mysterious veil of antiquity, we obtain some 
glimpses of a glorious and wondrous scene in the mighty 
youth of our world. We catch some rays from a mysterious 
temple and dwelling of demi-gods, and through the loopholes 
of time can even see giant shadows flitting along its arches, 
but are forbidden to enter and look upon its glories. The 
head-springs of the River of light, as the ancients said of the 
fountains of the Nile, no mortal eye can ever behold. 

It is well known that there are affinities between all the 

known languages of the earth, which leave but little room 

for doubt that they are all dialects of one original tongue. 

Amongf the countless theories of the human origin of lan- 
es o 

guage, which philosophical ingenuity has fabricated, it is diffi- 
cult to decide, not which is most plausible, but which is most 
sublimely absurd. 

The few brief hints of the Mosaic records are worth more 
than all modern theories. It is easy to believe that he who 
gave Noah, whether by internal inspiration or external com- 
munication, minute directions for the construction of the ark, 



THE CROSS. 29 

likewise imparted to his helpless creatures the rudiments at 
least of the arts and knowledge of civilization. It is very 
hard to believe that they had any other origin. 

To the same mighty ages, which conceal the sources of 
language and art and refinement, must be referred the origin 
of those fundamental principles of religion, which, with more 
or less defacement, have survived the ravages of time and 
the revolutions of society, and have ever been sensibly or in- 
sensibly the inmost life of all that raises man above other ani- 
mals. Admitting their divine origin, there is still a question 
as to the mode of communication. While some have con- 
tended for the spontaneous development of innate ideas, 
others have unjustly depreciated the human mind in their 
excessive dread of the inroads of reason upon the province 
of revelation. 

It is one of that multitude of disputes, in which one half of 
the truth has been striving on each side to take to itself the 
whole ground. 

There is mutual adaptation in all the works of God ; and all 
great and beautiful things both in the natural and moral 
world, are the compound results of reciprocal affinities. 
The soil is full of the germs of beauty, but without sunshine 
and rain they would slumber forever. In like manner the 
moral nature of man requires external culture, yet that cul- 
ture is worth little unless it conforms to the inmost structure 
of the mind itself. 

Every one knows that there are many truths which he 
would never have thought of until announced by some one 
else but, which when so announced he instantly lays hold of, 
assimilates and forever incorporates with his own intellectual 
being. For the acquisition of Divine Knowledge a suitable 
structure of the mind and preternatural communication were 
both requisite. The characters written upon the soul by the 
finger of God could be distinctly read only when shone 



30 THE CROSS. 

upon by light from Heaven, as the statue of Memnon was 
dumb till stricken by the rays of the rising sun. The finest 
chords of the human soul instantly respond to the touch of a 
skilful hand, and continue to vibrate after that hand has been 
withdrawn, though discordant notes soon mingle with, and 
sometimes almost overpower the moral melody. 

To explain myself more fully, I remark that our passions, 
sensibilities, faculties, our spiritual properties in short are 
stimulated by the presence of their appropriate objects; 
either their actual presence within reach of our perceptions, 
or their virtual presence by means of memory and imagina- 
tion. Now it is clear from the very nature of the objects of 
the moral faculties, that the communication necessary to a 
vivid apprehension of those objects, could have been at first 
effected only by some extraordinary process which I call pre- 
ternatural, because it forms no part of the present known 
course of nature. All the objects of all the other properties of 
the first man could have reached his consciousness without 
transcending the present order of things ; but God, his law and 
its sanctions in a future life must have been revealed by some 
process which has not been perpetuated. 

We have therefore good reason to believe that all which was 
good in the moral philosophy and religious observances of 
the ancient nations, consisted of traditionary fragments of a 
primitive revelation which had floated down on the stream of 
ages from a remote antiquity. From the original fountain of 
divine knowledge, the purest stream flowed through the 
Hebrews, who thus became the link between the patriarchal 
ages and the modern world, and all their institutions were 
studiously contrived to preserve the truth from the contam- 
ination of surrounding idolatry. Next to the Hebrews, the 
Persians preserved the truth better than any other people, 
from causes which will be mentioned hereafter. The streams 
which flowed through other channels, as the Indians and the 



THE CROSS 31 

Oreeks, though verdure and flowers sprang up along their 
margins, were almost lost in a deadly jungle of popular sup- 
erstitions. In these two nations, especially, the poetry of 
religion got the better of its philosophy, and richly clothed 
the mysterious realities of the universe with those beautiful 
mythologies which were no doubt at first profoundly symbol- 
ical. 

Idolatry, like every other error in practice, is only wo. ex- 
cess of what is good in itself. The tendency to embody in 
living or life-like forms (eidolaj the Supreme Power and 
-all subordinate powers, is an essential part of our nature, and 
must have been implanted in us for some good purpose. 
We will see hereafter what use Christianity has made of it, 
This brings us to the chief subject of the present discourse. 

A scheme of historical philosophy which should leave out 
Christianity, would be like that unlucky playbill, which an- 
nounced that, in the performance of Hamlet, the part of 
Hamlet would be omitted, by particular request. The 
Christian revelation furnishes the only solution of the most 
difficult problems of history, and throws a strong light upon 
the most striking and mysterious facts in the existence of 
roan upon earth. In that light, history becomes the develop- 
ment of a scheme for raising man from that absolute domin- 
ion of nature, under which his destinies could have been 
little higher than those of any other animal, by a stupendous 
series of moral providences and supernatural impulses, in 
which a thousand years are as one day. 

Of the progressive evolution of the divine plan for the ed- 
ucation of mankind, the introduction of Christianity forms as 
it were the culminating point, the summit level of the line of 
communication opened between earth and heaven. Reflected 
upon the past, it gave meaning and import to many striking 
facts in the history, not only of the people amongst whom it 
originated, but of other great nations of antiquity, which 



32 THE CROSS. 

would otherwise have remained inexplicable enigmas ; reach- 
ing forward into the boundless future, it became a fresh 
starting point in the moral providence of God, and has poured 
its healing streams through the desolate wastes of humanity, 
causing the moral desert to "rejoice and blossom as the 
rose." 

We make it a postulate, without which any intelligible 
theory of historical philosophy is unattainable, that man is a 
fallen being, or in other words, that his moral state has some- 
how suffered an insurrection, and now lies in ruins. We 
may speculate as we please as to how moral evil entered the 
world, that it is here is not a matter of speculation. What- 
ever is is right may be true in this sense, that no rebellious 
activity of subordinate powers can effectually thwart the pur- 
poses of the Infinite mind, but, on the contrary, will appear 
to have subserved them in a comprehensive survey of His 
universal government. Yet every one who would not do 
violence to his own nature, must admit that the moral world 
is " out of joint," and that the actual condition of our race, 
even of the highest among them, falls short of that ideal 
which exists in all minds, with more or less distinctness, of the 
specific perfection of humanity. For even in his ruined con- 
dition, enough of the divine original survives to show the 
height from which he has fallen ; — just as amidst the ruins of 
a Grecian temple, we stumble upon broken columns and ex- 
quisitely wrought capitals, which attest the matchless beauty 
of the ancient structure. 

Reason confirms the scriptural account, that man came from 
the hands of his Maker with a physical and moral structure, 
perfectly sound and healthy, that is to say with an unbroken 
harmony of faculties and impulses, and provided with the 
means of preserving his innocence and happiness. It is ob- 
vious that had this original equilibrium of his nature been 
preserved ; had no propensity ever transcended its legitimate 



THE CROSS. 33 

function, he would have remained a creature of mere im- 
pulse, and could never have had any knowledge of good or 
evil. For a moral quality supposes a certain conflict between 
motives, which are summoned to the bar of the judgment by 
passion, conscience and reason. 

Why the Omnipotent has permitted the original perfection 
of his workmanship to be overthrown, and what is the nature 
of that disturbing force which has brought discord and with 
it death and sorrow into the world, are questions which must 
return upon the thinking minds of each successive generation, 
in all their original perplexity, because they admit of no sat- 
isfactory answer in the present state of being. In regard to 
all such matters, we must " wait the great teacher Death and 
God adore," not doubting that he will finally vindicate to all 
his intelligent creatures the wisdom of his plans and the jus- 
tice of his administration. 

So far as the Divine counsels can be deciphered from the 
facts of history, nothing is clearer than that man was not 
designed for the tame and regular manifestation of a few 
genial impulses held in perfect equilibrium by the limiting 
properties of his nature, but rather for a vast, tempestuous 
existence, resulting from the polarity of powerful passions 
and antagonist tendencies. 

Every where indeed, in the physical and moral world, we 
find strife, antagonism, inordinate activity of forces followed 
by the re-action of others which had been for a time repress- 
ed. Why these things are so we cannot tell, though we may 
indulge in endless conjectures, which may serve as exercises 
of philosophical ingenuity. Perhaps we are passing from a 
lower to a higher standard of perfection, and the first putting 
forth of power towards the construction of the new building, 
may have destroyed forever the proportions of the original 
edifice. We may imagine these alternatives to have pre- 
sented themselves to the Supreme Mind; on the one hand 



34 THE CROSS. 

the complete realization at once of His own Divine idea of 
the world, secured, forever with the iron circle of necessity ; 
on the other a progressive evolution of that idea, which must 
have involved the existence of evil, for without relative im- 
perfection progress is inconceivable. That which is perfect 
cannot be made better. Perhaps out of the apparent anar- 
chy of riotous forces is to arise a more glorious order than 
would have been attainable without it. 

But aside from all speculations, one of these two things 
must betrue : either God made man imperfect, or he has per- 
mitted some one or more of his spiritual properties to be so 
potentiated, if I may be allowed the expression, as to trans- 
cend their proper functions, and thus overthrow the original 
harmony of human nature. For as disorder, or what we call 
moral evil, is unquestionably here, it is plain that it must 
either have formed a part of the original constitution, or have 
been introduced at a subsequent period. It would be useless 
to reason with any one who can entertain the former suppo- 
sition. 

Assuming then that man is a fallen, in other words, a dis- 
ordered creature, that the original harmony of his nature has 
been broken, and that the Eternal Father imparted to his 
helpless child the rudiments at least of that knowledge which 
was necessary to guide and sustain him in his mortal struggle 
with the foes that assailed him, and were lying in wait on 
every side, we will attempt to point out the chief stages of 
that great conflict with ignorance, sin and misery, which 
makes up the history of the race. We will endeavor to trace 
the progressive evolution of that stupendous plan, by which 
Providence has made provision for educating the whole com- 
plex nature of man, and thereby raising him from the ruins 
of the fall to that condition most favorable to his well-being 
here and hereafter. 

In my brief survey of the ancient nations, I shall cnofine 



THE CROSS. 35 

myself strictly to the share which each had in preparing the 
materials and laying the foundation of the Christian civiliza- 
tion. 

The streams of population, wherever we can trace them 
for any distance towards their sources, invariably lead us 
towards the banks of the Euphrates, or the country lying 
immediately to the east of that river. Modern researches 
have only served to confirm the opinion, that the country 
lying between the Euphrates and the Indus, was the primi- 
tive seat of the human race. The Ark, in all probability, 
rested upon one of the lofty summits of the Indian Caucasus, 
now called the Hindoo Coo and Elborz, parts of that stupen- 
dous chain extending from the frontiers of China to the Black 
Sea. It contains the highest mountains on the globe, and in 
its western valleys and fastnesses, are still to be found the 
finest specimens, in form and feature, of the Caucasian race. 
It forms the northern boundary of the region which was the 
cradle of Art, Religion, Science and Civilization ; of the zone 
of light, which, shooting westward across Europe and Amer- 
ica, will have encircled the globe, when the Anglo-Americans 
shall have peopled Oregon and California, and the English 
shall have infused new life and vigor into the ancient civili- 
zation of India. The light so vivid in the ancient world, 
along successive portions of this great belt, died away 
towards the north in the steppes of Tartary, and towards the 
south in the sands of Africa. 

I have already remarked that modern researches leave but 
little room for doubt, that all the languages of the earth are 
corruptions of one original tongue. But so strong are the 
affinities all alono- the belt I have described, that scholars 

o 

have grouped the dialects of the nations within it, including 
at one extreme, the Sanscrit, the sacred language of India ; at 
the other, the English and Spanish, which have reached the 
western coasts of America, in one class, called the Indo- 



36 THE CROSS. 

Germanic race of languages. The northern limit of the zone 
of light is a waving line rising in Western Europe to a high 
latitude, and it is a little remarkable that the northern boun- 
dary of temperate climate, from causes not yet satisfactorily 
explained, in like manner rises as it approaches the western 
coasts of Europe, until it almost reaches the sixtieth degree 
of latitude. It is as temperate at Edinburgh as in the north- 
ern part of Persia. The same phenomenon is observable 
en the western coasts of America. 

Along this great belt, with which the Caucasian race has 
girdled the earth, we trace the illuminated path of the histori- 
cal Providence of God. That Providence, in his majestic march 
to the westward, lingered long upon the lovely shores of the 
Mediterranean, but all along, the light of his radiant footsteps 
has grown fainter and fainter towards the north and south, 
where the nomades of Tartary and the dusky tribes of Afri- 
ca seem to have been left to the dominion of nature. 

The Persians were, in all probability, the primitive nation ; 
but inhabiting a rugged and mountainous country, they were 
outstripped in civilization by their neighbors who had settled 
on the rich plains of Chaldea. Yet both countries seem to 
have been in possession, from the first, of the arts and knowl- 
edge and manners of a civilized and intellectual people. The 
difference was something like that which now exists between 
the free and hardy mountaineers of the Alps, and the inhab- 
itants of the rich plains of Lombardy. 

Nothing that we know of the primitive seats of the human 
race, gives the least countenance to the theory of a gradual 
rise from the stupidity of barbarism into civilization and 
refinement ; a theory almost as absurd as the notion that men 
were originally monkeys, and have gradually ascended in 
the scale of being. 

There is not the least reason to suppose that the Persians, 
the Chaldeans, the Indians or the Egyptians, ever were barba- 



THE CROSS. 37 

rians. Very simple modes of living were by no means incon- 
sistent with that refinement and elevation of soul, which mani- 
fest themselves in the institutions that bless, and the arts which 
adorn society. The life and manners, of which we have so 
beautiful a picture in Genesis, may have been universal in 
the patriarchal ages, when men lived in the presence of God, 
and the recollections of a miraculous era were still fresh 
and vivid in the minds of all. Those venerable fathers of the 
human race ruled their immense families, the germs of great 
nations, according to laws revealed to them from Heaven, 
with the aid of councils composed of the elders of the tribe 
or chiefs distinguished for wisdom and courage. But the 
Patriarch was not only a ruler, he was also a Priest ; and the 
first care of those progenitors of mankind, was the worship of 
God, which, with its altars, its temples and its sacred music, 
was itself the nucleus of a splendid civilization. An enter- 
prising member of the family might remove with his children, 
herdsmen and cattle, and pitch his tent under the shade of 
palm trees beside some fountain in the wilderness. He 
might remain near enough to the primitive model of patri- 
archal government, and the primitive seat of Divine worship, 
to form another little focus of light which would gradually 
blend with the spreading illumination. Another member of 
the family might imprudently extend his wanderings so far 
as to place mountains, seas and deserts, between himself and 
the centre of the patriarchal civilization, and the unhappy 
vicissitudes of an inhospitable region, exhaling pestilential 
miasm, or tenanted by formidable beasts of prey, might 
gradually efface all ennobling recollections from the minds of 
his descendants, who would thus degenerate into barbarians. 
But there were other causes of degeneracy, besides re- 
moteness from the original seat of civilization. In the 
ancient world there was no expansive Christianity to form a 
bond of union and sympathy among civilized nations, to pre- 



38 THE CROSS. 

serve a moral life sufficiently vigorous to resist the progress 
of corruption, and to mitigate the desolating ferocity of war. 
Its place was imperfectly supplied by a succession of great 
Umpires. 

While tribes, that had wandered too far from the centre of 
illumination into inhospitable regions, degenerated into animal- 
ism, the Chaldeans, the Indians, and the Egyptians, possessed 
of the dangerous advantages of an exuberant soil and volup- 
tuous climate, likewise fell from the simple virtue and pure 
Theism of their Persian ancestors into idolatry and an incon- 
ceivable corruption of morals. Such a state of things would 
probably have been fatal to civilization, had not the mountains 
of Persia remained a citadel of truth and a home of robust 
virtues, from which a conquering energy went forth to drive 
back encroaching barbarism. 

There was singular stability in the laws and religion of 
the Persians. Their country was poor, their manners simple 
and austere, and they were remarkable for the care which they 
bestowed upon the education of their children. From these 
causes the primitive revelation was better preserved among 
them, than any other people except the Hebrews. Every one 
knows or ought to know something of that famous philoso- 
phy, which has filled so large a space m the history of the 
human mind. Somewhat corrupted, as it doubtless was, in 
the time of Zoroaster, it still retained a strong likeness to 
the true religion. The conflict of the two principles, subor- 
dinate to the supreme mind, is in fact substantially recogniz- 
ed by Christianity. The Persian philosophy probably pass- 
ed into Greece through Asia Miner and Egypt, which latter 
country became, by means of its extensive commerce, the 
grand reservoir of the doctrines and science of the eastern 
nations. 

But the custody and propagation of Divine truth was by no 
means the mission of the Persians. That great work was 



THE CROSS. 39 

allotted to other nations. When civilization was in danger 
of perishing by the poison of licentiousness, the destructive 
rage of incessant wars and the inroads of barbarians, the 
Persian empire brought to its aid a regular administration of 
comparatively wise and just laws, a venerable priesthood, a 
chivalrous nobility, and a central power sufficiently strong to 
form a bond of union, and a common defence to the most 
civilized portions of the earth. 

But if Christianity and liberty be wanting, all other ad- 
vantages cannot preserve an empire from decay and final 
dissolution. I have already remarked that no social superi- 
ority can last, in which the whole complex nature of man is 
not fully provided for. Christianity, which alone fully supplies 
his moral wants, and liberty, which gives fair play to all his 
powers and propensities, was obviously incompatible with the 
very qualities which enabled the Persian, the Greek and 
the Roman empires in succession to protect and extend the 
ancient civilization. 

While the Persian empire was at the height of its glory 
though vice and slavery were secretly undermining it, a few 
small tribes around the Mediterranean, either unknown or 
despised by the " great King " and his magnificent satraps, 
were slowly but surely laying the foundations of the modern 
world. These were the Hebrews, the Greeks, the Romans 
and the Germanic nations. 

The Germans belong more especially to modern history, 
and will be treated of in the next discourse. The great 
work of preparing the materials of that edifice which now 
overshadows the world, was parcelled out to the other three 
nations we have mentioned. To the Hebrews was allotted 
the custody of moral and religious truth, to the Greeks the 
empire of reason and imagination, to the iron Romans the 
power of arms, by which, with their own civil institutions, 
and the arts, literature and religion of the other two nations, 



40 THE CROSS. 

they were to lay a deep and broad foundation for the Chris- 
tian civilization. Upon that foundation the free Germans 
were to build the modern world. 

Let us first turn our attention to that wonderful people, 
who were the bulwark of Europe against Asiatic despotism, 
and the teachers of mankind in art and literature and philos- 
ophy. 

The heroic ages of great nations are very much alike in 
their leading characteristics. In the fervid youth of an intel- 
lectual people, such as the Greeks, music and poetry supply 
the place of science ; the glow and vivid coloring of feeling 
and imagination precede the cold and sharp outlines of ac- 
curate narrative, and the forms of heroes and great benefac- 
tors of mankind tower aloft into more than mortal grandeur, 
through the misty but glory-tinted medium of mythical tra- 
dition. 

The Pelasgi, or aboriginal Greeks, remote from the centre 
of civilization on the Euphrates, fell into barbarism. After 
some sparks had been brought from Phoenicia, Lydia, and 
Egypt, and the lights of knowledge had been rekindled on 
the shores of Greece, a long period of fermentation and 
struggle of conflicting elements, preceded the final triumph 
of intellect over physical force. Wild beasts were numerous 
and formidable, the seas were infested with pirates, and rob- 
bers descended from their strongholds among the mountains 
to ravage the coasts, where the germs of the new civilization 
had been planted. Heroes, like Hercules and Theseus, 
whom we picture to ourselves in all the glory of youthful 
beauty, matchless strength, and unconquerable fortitude, or 
great kings, like Minos, generously undertook to subdue 
those enemies of society. Their achievements were cele- 
brated by the bards, who recited their verses beside the 
watch-fires of predatory bands, in the cottages of peasants, 
and the palaces of kings. These heroic poems were the 



THE CROSS. 41 

original sources of that literature which has entered so large- 
ly into our modern culture. 

The early poetry of Greece, as of every other nation was 
vitally connected with religion, and from the union of the 
two, sprang that beautiful mythology which has not yet lost 
its charm for cultivated minds. The affinities between poe- 
try and religion are so strong, that even false taste and false 
philosophy can effect only a temporary separation. Relig- 
ious ideas may not indeed show themselves on the surface, 
but religious or devotional feeling must in a greater or less 
degree vitalize all true poetry, like the mysterious soul of 
nature, which, itself unseen, makes its presence known by a 
thousand glowing forms of life and beauty. 

There is no doubt that the aboriginal Greeks acknowledg- 
ed but one God. This simple and universal faith of the 
primitive ages was corrupted by the imagination and sensi- 
bility, in other words, by poetry encroaching upon, and 
finally dethroning the understanding. A.s all men are more 
or less idolatrous from their very structure, the philosophy 
of religion might have been wholly banished from the world, 
had it not been providentially preserved by the peculiar 
economy of the Hebrews, — a very important, perhaps the 
most important part of which was the prohibition to make 
any image or likeness of any thing in heaven above, or the 
earth beneath, or the waters under the earth. 

We have said that all men are idolators. This is only say- 
ing, that for every man there is some being that affects his 
perception, or his imagination, or both, in such a manner as 
to call forth that intense love which may be termed adoration. 
Every man of feeling makes an idol of something at some 
period of his life. The lover idolizes his mistress, the artist 
worships the creations of his own imagination, the christian 
adores the divinity in the person of the divine founder of his 
religion; Every where we see the poetical tendency idoliz- 
4 



42 THE CROSS. 

ing the beautiful and divine, that is to say, striving to embody 
them in living or lifelike forms, which may affect the senses, 
the feelings and the imagination. No one need be startled 
by the assertion, that idolatry has been one of the chief 
sources of our modern culture. 

The lively Greek of the heroic ages did not look upon 
Nature like a modern philosopher of the mechanical school. 
For him the earth, the air and the waters were peopled by 
mysterious beings, to whom poetry gave a " local habitation 
and a name." In a creed which was the offspring, not of 
cold reason, but of imagination and sensibility, the subordi- 
nate powers of nature, clothed in living forms, gradually 
supplanted the one supreme but incomprehensible source of 
life and beauty. 

We observe further, that heroes and great benefactors of 
mankind, were supposed to preside after death over the des- 
tinies of those whom they had saved by their valor, or en- 
lightened by their wisdom. 

From these two sources sprang that wonderful mythology, 
which was at first merely the aggregate of the modes, in 
which the mysterious powers of the living world, and the 
great men of the heroic ages, affected a lively and poetical 
people, and so far had much truth and beauty in it. Indeed 
it was the richest, the most glowing, the most suggestive of 
all the mythical forms which religion has ever taken, and 
therefore the best fitted to enter largely into intellectual cul- 
ture, for the readiest mode of access to the dormant powers 
of the mind lies through the poetical sentiments. The cul- 
ture of all great nations, as already remarked, has begun 
with poetry. 

The feelings and ideas of the heroic ages of Greece found 
in Homer, a genius that could give them immortality. The 
literary controversy, respecting the Homeric poems, which 
is not yet, and I suppose never can be settled, is not import- 



THE CROSS. 43 

ant to the student of history. For him it is enough to know, 
that in the time of Pisistratus, these poems were reduced 
to their present form, and from that period, became the foun- 
tains of national enthusiasm, intellectual development and 
artistic inspiration. By the impulse which they gave to the 
mind of Greece, they have filled a larger space in the history 
of human improvement than any other writings except the 
Scriptures. 

That impulse was widened and perpetuated by a variety of 
concurrent causes. The glorious issue of the struggle in 
which the little states of Greece defied and overthrew the 
colossal power of Persia ; the subsequent career of Pericles, 
who, with true Greek versatility, united in his own person the 
wise statesman, the accomplished orator, the able comman- 
der and discriminating patron of letters and the arts ; the 
teachings of Socrates, and above all perhaps the flexibility 
of that matchless language, which seems to have been made 
especially for the most intellectual and versatile people on 
earth, all conspired to bring forth that astonishing array of 
poets, philosophers, historians and rhetoricians, who con- 
quered the conquerors of the world, and made the Greek 
literature one of the chief sources of modern culture. 

Homer and Eschylus were not more truly the fathers of 
Epic and Dramatic poetry, than were Aristotle and Plato 
the masters of all subsequent Philosophers who have been 
worthy of the name. While the former was chiefly remark- 
able for that rigorous and scientific method, which gave him 
the absolute dominion of the human mind in the infancy of 
modern philosophy, Plato is the great representative of that 
other extensive class of minds, in which reason, imagination 
and feeling do not act separately, but in concert, and so 
mingle in all the processes of thought, that none of its pro- 
ducts are the cold syllogistic results of the logical understand- 
ing, but assume the imperative form of intuitive belief, and 



44 THE CROSS. 

somewhat of the warm, yet ethereal glow of poetry and 
passion. As the only faith that is worth anything, is the 
joint product of reason, hope and love, it is not wonderful 
that Plato has always been a favorite with Christian philoso- 
phers, especially as in parts of his system, his notions of the 
Trinity, for example, he so remarkably anticipated some of 
the fundamental doctrines of the Christian religion. 

Yet the Gospel, when first promulged, found no foothold 
in the opinions of philosophers. The Platonic system 
was too pure and lofty to retain any hold upon the licentious 
and unbelieving ape which followed the downfall of the 
Roman Republic, and the deep decay of public and private 
virtue under the profligate despotism of the Caesars. It was 
supplanted by the graceful but shallow materialism of Epi- 
curus, whose reign was scarcely disturbed by the few phil- 
osophers, who, from the barren elevation of stoicism, looked 
down with contempt upon the common feelings of human 
nature, and the tenderest impulses of the heart. 

It is hardly possible to overrate the influence of the Greek 
language and literature upon the destinies of mankind. They 
followed the Roman arms to the ends of the earth. Wher- 
ever the eagles perched, the masterpieces of Grecian 
genius soon found an entrance to awaken the powers of the 
mind, or stimulate a generous emulation. 

The Greeks, though politically the subjects, were intellec- 
tually the masters of the Romans. That austere and martial 
people had but little which deserved the name of poetry, 
philosophy or eloquence, till the Greek models excited a 
spirit of emulation among them. From that period, Latin 
litei ature made rapid advances, and though it never reached 
the perfection of its prototype, it ranks next to Christianity 
itself, as an element of modern civilization. But it was not 
alone through the intermediate agency of its offspring, the 
Latin, that the Greek literature has helped to form the pres- 



THE CROSS. 45 

ent state of society. We shall find that the revival of the 
parent literature itself in the latter part of the middle ages, 
gave an additional and most powerful impulse to modern 
improvement. 

How wonderful are the ways of Providence. Ages on 
ages of wars, and heroes, and demi-gods, and inferior bards 
were required to produce a Homer, for the greatest genius 
can do nothing without fitting materials. That strong stem 
of heroic poetry, which the genius of the blind beggar first 
lifted into perennial sunshine, became a great tree and blos- 
somed in the skies, so that the Roman eagles came and rested 
among its branches, then winging their flight over a prostrate 
world, sowed the seeds of intellectual culture in the blood 
and ashes of conquered nations. 

This brings us to another set of actors in the mighty drama 
of history. We have given a brief sketch of the glorious 
share of the Greeks in developing the divine plan for the 
education of mankind. Let us turn a little farther to the 
west, and evoke a dread array of stern and martial figures 
from the shadowy deep of the past eternity. Their austere 
countenances, iron mould and haughty tread, under which 
earth trembles, announce the conquerors of the world. 

Rome had her mythic age, and the learned Niebuhr has 
analyzed her early traditions with that profound and exhaus- 
tive research which is characteristic of German inquirers. — 
But for our present purpose, we are concerned only with her 
military power and her civil institutions. 

He who sees no Divinity in the affairs of men, w r ho recog- 
nizes no Providential guidance of nations, will refer the 
peculiar manifestations of a people to organization, to insti- 
tutions, to mere external and mechanical causes. But among 
a people who enjoy any considerable share of freedom, 
institutions and other external circumstances are rather the 
effects than the causes of national peculiarities. The truth 



46 THE CROSS. 

lies in the middle, between the opposite extremes of the 
mechanical and dynamical theories, or rather is made up of 
both. Individual and national peculiarities are the com- 
pound results of inscrutable impulses arising in the mysteri- 
ous depths of spiritual being, and of external circumstances, 
acting and reacting in such a manner, that it is impossible to 
assign to each class of causes their respective shares in the 
product. 

It is stated that, judging from casts, medals and skulls which 
have been found in particular localities, the Romans must 
have generally differed from the Greeks in the shape of the 
head, and it is somewhat remarkable, that the difference is 
precisely such that, according to the phrenologists, the Roman 
would have fewer ideas and less sensibility, but far greater 
intensity of will, than the versatile Greeks. Be this as it may, 
(it is certainly worthy of investigation) we know that from 
the first, the Romans were remarkable for their austere, 
haughty and inflexible temper, their voluntary poverty and 
contempt of wealth and luxury, and the decisive, remorseless 
energy with which they crushed and trampled upon all who 
obstructed their march to universal dominion. 

They were men of an idea, and that idea was embedded in 
an iron-bound will, undisturbed by the variety of motives 
which would have alternately reigned in broader and more 
versatile minds. Nowhere was the man ever so completely 
merged in the citizen as at Rome. IN owhere has individual- 
ity ever been so utterly annihilated by the one overmastering 
idea of the State. Sparta may be thought an exception. 
Bat the Spartans can scarcely be said to have had any ideas of 
their own. They were stupified and degraded into semi- 
barbarians by the most absurd and unnatural institutions that 
ever enslaved the human mind. They were mere human 
machines, drilled into a soulless uniformity. 

In Rome similar but far greater results were obtained by 



THE CROSS. 47 

the concurrence of free minds. The Roman was the most 
intensely patriotic of all patriots ; he was scarcely conscious of 
any interest, duty or destiny apart from the great political 
body of which he was a member. Virtue, among this austere 
people, was but another name for unconquerable energy and 
unshaken fortitude, and those qualities were most valued 
which ministered not to social and domestic happiness, but 
to the greatness and glory of the Republic. 

Of the external sources of the military power of the Romans, 
perhaps the most important, were slavery and aristocracy. 
Slaveholders are fiery and overbearing and fond of military 
life. Accustomed to brook no opposition to their will, and 
to cany everything by storm, they bring to the management 
of public affairs the feelings and habits of domestic life. Every 
free Roman was a privileged person, who considered himself 
entrusted with the honor and glory of the Republic. Above 
this class were the haughty patricians, whose leading traits 
Shakspeare has grouped with such exquisite skill, in the 
character of Coriolanus, whose unbending pride, disdaining 
to concede anything to the turbulent rabble he despised, 
sought refuge from vulgar annoyance in the camp and the 
field. 

Imagine a high-spirited and turbulent democracy of slave- 
holders guided by a haughty aristocracy, who can keep their 
places at the head of society only by perpetually diverting 
the minds of the commons from domestic dissensions to great 
national enterprises, and it is easy to see that the exuberant 
activity of such a people must make them the terror and 
scourge of mankind. Such circumstances infallibly engender 
a military spirit, and render the foreign policy bold, decisive 
and overbearing. 

Yet as already intimated, all that can be said about exter- 
nal circumstances leaves much in the Roman history unac- 
counted for, and to be referred to unknown and inscrutable 



48 THE CROSS. 

causes. To the activity and encroaching spirit of a slave- 
holding democracy, and the fore-sight and prudence of an 
aristocracy, the Roman government united under Kings and 
decemvirs, under dictators and consuls, in short, through all 
the changes of her constitution, a unity of purpose, an in- 
flexible adherence to the same general maxims of policy, 
and a steady, unconquerable energy, which are absolutely 
unparalleled, even by those nations where the whole execu- 
tive authority is lodged in a single hereditary magistrate. 

The steady progress of the Roman power during a period 
of eight hundred years is indeed marvellous, and cannot be 
accounted for on any ordinary principles. The fierce dis- 
sensions, which tore the vitals of the republic, never for a 
moment interrupted the career of foreign conquest. The 
very men who, as partizans of Sylla or Marius, drenched the 
streets of Rome with blood, bore the eagles in triumph over 
prostrate Asia and Europe. At home they were factious 
partisans, abroad they were Romans, the masters of the 
world, and filled with the one idea of the greatness of the 
republic. The fires which raged in the " Demon city," and 
seemed to threaten her destruction, only quickened her pro- 
gress to universal empire. 

In spite of anarchy and civil war, — in spite of dreadful 
defeats like that of Cannae, which would have reduced any 
other people to despair, consul after consul, generation after 
generation pursued the same blood-stained jDath to universal 
dominion. The ferocity of the Gauls, the genius of Hanni- 
bal rolled back the tide, but it only gathered strength for a 
still more terrible eruption. Victory and defeat were alike 
in their ultimate results; the tread of the legions was the 
march of destiny, and every Roman seemed armed with 
more than mortal might by a consciousness of the stupendous 
mission of his country. 

At the height of her glory, when the spoils of nations 



THE CROSS. 49 

were poured into her lap, and captive monarchs were led in 
triumphal processions through the streets of the " eternal 
city," the rage of factions and corruption of manners were 
preparing the way for that fearful despotism, which finally 
trampled down all parties into one common abyss of undis- 
tinguished slavery. And here the hand of Providence was 
not less conspicuous than in every other part of that "strange 
eventful history;" for though the republic could conquer, it 
required a single despotic arm to consolidate, and hold to- 
gether that vast and unwieldy dominion. 

Before we proceed further with the mission of Rome, let 
us turn back and trace the history of the primitive revelation, 
the provision for the moral part of our nature. More or less 
corrupted in all other nations, it was committed to the guar- 
dianship of an obscure tribe, of which this precious deposit 
was, in fact, almost the sole distinction. 

Among the monuments of the Hebrews, the book of Job 
is entitled to especial notice on account of its distinct and pe- 
culiar character. There is a breadth, a freedom, a philo- 
sophic tone about it, which mark it as a relic of that primitive 
age before the knowledge of God had passed from the wide 
field of eastern tradition into the exclusive custody of the 
Hebrews. The nations had not then fallen into idolatry, nor 
made it necessary as yet to wall in with the jealous provisions 
of the Hebrew Theocracy a narrow channel by which the 
streams of everlasting truth might flow down to Christian 
ages through the moral wilderness of ancient superstitions. 
It is probably the oldest book in the world. In the desert 
tracts of time, which preceded all other extant memorials 
the drear expanse is broken by this one pure and sparkling 
fount of philosophic truth, with its clustering palms of ori- 
ental poetry. Whether regarded as a narrative of actual 
facts, or as a sort of moral drama, it beautifully illustrates the 
manners and belief of the early ages, and abounds with pro- 
5 



50 THE CROSS. 

found thought and sublime imagery, as well as prophetic 
anticipations of the glorious developments of after times. 

The principal scope of this work seems to be the illustra- 
tion of the important truth, that the misery of the righteous 
and the prosperity of the wicked in this world, should not for 
a moment unsettle our moral convictions or our confidence in 
the wisdom and justice of God. 

The best men are sometimes the most unhappy, and the 
sublimest virtues often inhabit the most desolate hearts. In- 
deed if we consider how often the greatest benefactors of 
mankind have been rewarded with poverty and contempt, 
with a life of torture and a shameful death ; how often in the 
noblest natures, constitutional defects of bodily structure, or 
the nervous diseases induced by the " malady of thought," 
poison the well-springs of existence ; how the very process 
of exalting and purifying sharpens the moral sensibilities, so 
that the better a man becomes, the more intensely conscious 
he is of his remaining imperfections, we may justly conclude 
that the highest of our race have oft times good reason to 
exclaim with the apostle of the Gentiles, " if in this life only 
we have hope, we are of all men most miserable." 

The book of Job is manifestly designed to teach this im-* 
portant lesson, the very foundation of all religion, that the 
mysterious facts to which I have referred should not shake 
our conviction that a just God presides over the destinies of 
mankind, and that virtue and well-being, vice and ill-being, 
are connected by the inexorable laws of the universe, but 
should inspire humility in view of the present limited state of 
our knowledge, as well as a lively expectation of a future 
life in which all these anomalies of the present, will be satis- 
factorily explained. The wisest man on earth finding fault 
with the Divine government, is like a fly on the surface of a 
cartoon of Raphael, pronouncing judgment on the whole 



THE CROSS. 51 

matchless performance, from the inequalities within the little 
circle of his own microscopic vision. 

The patriarchal ages of the Hebrews, from the calling of 
Abraham to the Egyptian bondage, were the period of tran- 
sition from that primitive and highly civilized era, of which 
tfre book of Job is the only surviving literary memorial, to 
that singular economy, which fenced in with the most tre- 
mendous sanction a peculiar people from the contagion of 
error, that was overspreading the earth, and committed to 
their jealous custody the light from Heaven, which was al- 
lowed to be more or less obscured in all other nations, until 
the way was prepared for its glorious culmination in the 
Christian dispensation. 

Proceeding further, we behold a shepherd of Midian, the 
refugee of a tribe of slaves, confront a haughty monarch of 
that magnificent dynasty which built the pyramids; demand 
in the name of God the liberty of his brethren ; finally res- 
cue them from bondage under the most powerful nation of 
the time ; give them a law that yet lives in the moral code 
and municipal institutions of all enlightened nations, and then 
ascend a mountain to die alone with his God, and look with 
his closing eyes upon the splendid inheritance of his people. 

The history of the subsequent conquest of the Promised 
Land must be a great stumbling block in the way of those 
who pretend to find in the Bible the sickly moral sentimen- 
talism of peace societies and anti-slavery philanthropists. 
We cannot disguise the fact that the Hebrew dispensation 
was bloody and terrible, just like all the other mighty evolu- 
tions of Divine Providence. The light of Divine knowledge 
became, as it always does, a consuming fire, and a flaming 
sword turned every way before the ark of eternal truth. 
This fact has furnished a favorite cavil to scepticism, but it is 
strange that any one who believes that there is a God who 
made and governs the world, should object to the Hebrew 



52 THE CROSS. 

economy for corresponding precisely with a multitude of 
facts, which, however mysterious they may appear, actually 
do happen in the dominions of a just, all- wise, and all-pow- 
erful Being. 

There is a fearful as well as a smiling aspect of the Divine 
government both in nature and history, and it is fit that rev- 
elation should exhibit each in its turn. The destroying hosts 
of Attila and Tamerlane were the " scourges of God, who 
turned them whithersoever he would as the rivers of water." 
The storm of war sweeps through a happy and beautiful 
country. The morning looked out upon green fields, and 
smiling villages ; the evening sheds its "farewell sweet," as if 
in mockery, upon the dead and dying, and lingers upon the 
blackened or blazing cottages from which the wretched in- 
habitants have been driven into the howling waste. Love 
and terror, life and death, joy and wo strangely jostle each 
other in this incomprehensible world. 

Ye sentimental sceptics, who are shocked by the severity 
of the God of the Hebrews, what think you of some of the 
doings of your favorite nature. If many are crushed by the 
wheels of Providence, how many more are ground to pow- 
der by the fearful machinery of the physical world. The 
earthquake moves on his fiery couch, and the crash of fall- 
ing cities is mingled with the shrieks of the helpless, and the 
groans of the dying. The cheerful fruits of industry are 
suddenly blasted, and famine and misery are the lot of na- 
tions. Over broad oceans and lofty mountains the pestilence 
flies on unseen pinions from city to city, and the deathcart 
rumbles through grass-grown streets, bearing the remains of 
vigorous manhood and blooming youth to their long home. 
The spectres of wo and horror have been guests at every fire- 
side, inmates of every dwelling, and companions of every 
bosom. Even the beauty of the earth is a fearful beauty, 
as of the vines and flowers that wreathe a sepulchre. 



THE CROSS. 53 

All great and glorious things the world has had to pay for, 
and fearful has been the price of heaven's best gifts to man. 
The fairest plants of human culture have been watered with 
tears and blood. Under the same Providence from which the 
Hebrew economy proceeded, modern civilization was ushered 
in amidst storms ; ancient corruptions of society were washed 
away by the blood-bath of the French revolution, and then 
we are told that " the new heavens and earth wherein dwell- 
eth righteousness" shall be born from the fiery agonies of an 
expiring world. 

Such are the conditions of our present being, cant and 
cavils to the contrary notwithstanding. The facts are im- 
moveable as the everlasting hills, and so desperately intract- 
able that they will not bend to our philosophers' notions of 
the Divine government. 

The Hebrews often went astray and worshipped the gods 
of other nations, but prophets were raised up from time to 
time, whose warnings and entreaties brought them back to 
the right path. The stream of prophetic inspiration seems 
to have flowed most freely just before the Babylonish captiv- 
ity, and to have been afterwards withdrawn when it was no 
longer needed. The religious institutions of the Hebrews 
derived fresh vigor from the destruction of their national 
independence. 

At the height of her power and glory, under the succes- 
sors of David, Israel often fell into the idolatry of surround- 
ing and inferior tribes. But after she had sunk into an 
insignificant dependency of the Persian, the Greek and the 
Roman empires in succession, her political degradation made 
her cling more closely to her religious superiority, as the last 
resource of nationality, and stubbornly resist any intrusion 
of the philosophy or religion of her conquerors ; — spiritual 
pride thus absorbing and deriving new vigor from love of 



54 THE CROSS. 

country, degenerated into bigotry and fanatical hatred of 
other nations, unparalleled in history. 

There is a striking contrast between the mission and the 
character of the Hebrews. The most precious jewel was 
deposited in the most ungainly casket. The institutions of 
other nations are more or less the reflection of the national 
character. Those of the Hebrews are foreign to them, — as if 
they had been made the unwilling or unconscious guardians 
of a treasure, of the nature and value of which they had very 
erroneous or inadequate notions. How strange that the most 
narrow-minded and barbarous tribe which could be ranked 
at all among the civilized nations of antiquity, had the only 
pure system of religion, the only rational code of morals ! 
In these respects they were as far superior to the Greeks, as 
the Greeks were superior to them in everything else. While 
the moral systems of the wisest people of antiquity have long 
since perished, or been preserved only as examples of philo- 
sophical ingenuity, that of the Hebrews still lives in the 
hearts and daily business of men in all civilized nations. 

The Hebrews had the custody, not only of the great truth 
of the unity of God, but also of that moral law which raises 
man from the dominion of nature into a higher dignity, in- 
volving a mightier destiny for good or evil, than the other 
animals. But man feels that he has violated, or fallen short 
of the requirements of that higher law. The Hebrew dis- 
pensation foreshadowed, by a multitude of significant sym- 
bols, the means appointed by God for healing the breach 
between the fallen creature and the inexorable law of that 
moral government, of which he had been made the subject by 
the superiority of Ids endowments. What reasons in the con- 
stitution of the universe made it necessary that a Divine vic- 
tim should quench in his own blood the flaming sword of 
Eternal Justice, we cannot tell, but certain it is that the no- 
tion of propitiation by sacrifice is as old as any authentic 



THE CROSS. 55 

traditions of mankind, and as universal as the belief of a God 
or a future life. This brings us to the last and greatest scene 
in the drama of ancient history. 

The mission of Rome, as I have already intimated, was to 
lay a broad and deep foundation for the Christian civiliza- 
tion. This she was to do by her own municipal institutions, 
which I shall have occasion to notice more particularly, when 
I come to the history of the middle ages ; by her civil laws, 
which were gradually matured into that unrivalled code, to 
which we may trace most of the improvements of modern 
jurisprudence, and by carrying the Greek and Latin litera- 
ture and all the arts and refinements of civilized life, over all 
the baibarous and semi-barbarous countries which were con- 
quered by her arms. 

It was that very remarkable period, when the empire had 
fairly begun to reduce to order and consolidate into a firm 
foundation for the modern world all the vast materials which 
the conquering republic had brought together, which was 
chosen for the introduction of Christianity. The civilized 
world, from the Tweed to the Euphrates, reposed under the 
wings of the imperial eagle. All factions and provincial 
quarrels had been crushed by a single despotic authority, 
and one might travel, without internrption by hostile armies 
or national boundaries, from one end of the earth to the other. 

The moral and intellectual condition of mankind was very 
remarkable. The Greek philosophy was bringing into con- 
tempt among enlightened men, the gods and goddesses of the 
old mythologies, and that deep decay of the popular supersti- 
tions had commenced, which in the next age progressed so far, 
that a Lucian could with impunity set the world to laughing at 
the beggarly condition of their dethroned majesties of Olym- 
pus. This was partly owing to the liberality of the Roman 
government, which, by permitting the incongruous supersti- 
tions of the many nations subject to her sway to be placed 



56 THE CROSS. 

side by side, brought the whole Pantheon into contempt, by 
filling it with squabbling regiments of national divinities. 

As usual in such cases, the old forms of religion had given 
space to an earthly and sensual philosophy, which might be 
compressed into the maxim, " eat, drink and be merry, for 
to-morrow ye die." This philosophy might suit the thought, 
less and the profligate, yet there were doubtless many deep 
and earnest natures, to whom this was indeed an hour of 
darkness and moral desolation. 

The temple of Janus was closed, for the sounds of civil 
war had died away along the shores of Epirus, and the awful 
majesty of the all-conquering Republic still hovered over the 
wall of steel, which fenced the civilized world from the deserts 
of Parthia and the forests of Germany. The Roman power 
had nearly reached its zenith, and the iron virtues of the 
Republic began to soften under the influence of Greek liter- 
ature, eastern luxury and universal peace. The municipal insti- 
tutions and laws of Rome, and the literature of the Greek and 
Latin languages, were beginning to mould all the subject na- 
tions into one homogeneous civilization, and thus build up all 
around the glorious Mediterranean (the middle of the earth) 
a magnificent theatre for new and mightier evolutions of the 
purposes of God and the destinies of man. 

Such was the juncture which had been chosen in the coun- 
sels of Infinite Wisdom for the appearance of the Divine 
Deliverer. 

Christianity in its origin was quiet and unobtrusive, like 
all other great and lasting revolutions. Their beginnings 
are in obscure and silent recesses, and not until their pro- 
gress brings them in contact with that upper crust of custom, 
prejudices and old institutions, which time has hardened into 
stone, do they begin to shake the world. 

An obscure person, whose former life was little known 
even by his first disciples, issued from an insignificant city of 



THE CROSS. 57 

an insignificant province of the vast Empire of Rome. He 
walked up and down in Judea healing the sick, consoling the 
distressed, enduring hunger, poverty and reproach. He was 
never known to laugh, but he was seen to weep, and he chose 
the darkness of night and the solitude of rocks and deserts, 
to pray to his Father. Gathering upon the mountain side 
or the barren sea-shore, the humble multitude, whom the 
sanctimonious shepherds of Israel had forgotten in their ser- 
vility to rank and wealth and power, he taught them a lofty 
morality at war with the strongest propensities of man, in 
concise, pregnant, comprehensive maxims, which have never 
been paralleled. Lifted upon the Cross to suffer a death of 
shame and agony, when he knew that his work was done, 
his soul rushed forth in that cry of doom, "It is finished" 
which shook the frame of nature, and in the darkness that 
followed, an old era took its flight forever. 

1 say nothing of the doctrines of Christianity. It is not 
my province. But the Divinity of Christ, his life, his death, 
and the purport of both are not mere dogmas ; they are facts 
or they are fables. If it be true that the Divine Word has 
descended from heaven, clothed himself in human nature, 
become the second representative of the human family, and 
quenched in his own blood the flaming sword of inexorable 
Law ; if he has gone before us as our elder brother through 
shame and poverty and sorrow and death, to be crowned the 
conqueror of our last enemy, and ascend on high leading captiv- 
ity captive, it is plain that here are facts, in comparison with 
which all other facts are insignificant. In comparison with 
this glorious embodiment of the poetry of religion, what are 
all the speculations of philosophy, what are all the cold cal- 
culations of prudential morality ! 

On these facts, as an eloquent writer has observed, the world 
may be said to have had its foundation for nearly two thousand 
years, and in them we must look for the chief sources of the 



58 THE CROSS. 

peculiar glories and advantages of the Christian civilization. 
Surely it is worth while for every man to give these facts an 
earnest and impartial examination. If the gospel history is 
even substantially true, it is infinitely the most important 
part of history ; properly, the central and loftiest point, from 
which all history should be looked at. 

Here we must look for the fountain-head of that only true 
Democracy, the essence of which is love, and which teaches 
us to respect the rights of all men, without regard to any dis- 
tinctions whatever, either natural, artificial or conventional. 
If, in the distribution of spiritual favors, the mightiest mon- 
arch is nothing more than the humblest of his subjects, nei- 
ther is the sage who measures the stars anything more than 
the clown who "walks and wots not what they are." All 
other dignities are lost in the one great dignity of rational, 
responsible man. A Chimborazo would seem no greater 
than a mole-hill to an observer in the sun, and to pursue the 
figure, as the same sunbeam that gilds the tall cedar upon 
the mountain cliff, kisses the dew-drop from the harebell in 
the lowest valley, so the light of the Gospel visits alike the 
palace and the hovel, and its blessings descend alike upon 
every age and rank and condition of society. 

Christianity, as embodied in the precepts and example of 
its founder, is peculiarly the antagonist of social injustice, 
and fixes our attention more strongly upon the equality than 
the inequality of men. What were the trappings of rank 
and wealth and power to Him who knew the hearts of all men. 
He chose his Apostles not from the Sanhedrim, but from 
the humblest of the multitude, and the weak and despised 
things of the earth were made to confound the mighty. He 
was the friend of publicans and sinners, and shared with the 
wretched the shame and miseries of poverty and contempt. 
He threw a light from Heaven into the lowest abysses of guilt 
and misery, and brought his message of hope and salvation 



THE CROSS. 59 

to the vilest of earth's outcasts. Enumerating the miracles 
by which he proved his Divine mission, he mentions as the 
last and crowning wonder, " that the poor have the Gospel 
preached to them." 

I do not mean that the Christian religion is in itself more 
favorable to one form of government than another. It cer- 
tainly does not, as has been absurdly claimed for it, give any 
direct sanction to democratic institutions. But so far as its 
true spirit prevails, it tends to diminish the burdens and in- 
crease the benefits of all government. Genuine liberty im- 
plies that justice is secm*ed to all and each, that no man 
however humble is subjected to any restraints, which are not 
demanded by the equal rights of others. I say nothing about 
the general good, which is altogether too vague, and has too 
often been the plea for oppressing individuals and minorities. 

Now the entire theory of equal rights is compressed into 
that maxim; "Do to others as ye would that they should do 
to you;" or that second of the two great commandments of 
the law; "Love your neighbor as yourself." As already 
remarked, the character of Christ was a living embodiment 
of these two precepts, and whoever loves him will cultivate 
the same dispositions. It is obvious that just in proportion 
as men voluntarily yield that respect to the rights of others, 
which is the object of law to enforce, do they diminish the 
necessity for strong government, and weaken the apologies 
for despotism. 

I will briefly notice a part of the historical evidence of 
Christianity which has been the theme of much controversy, 
arising, as it seems to me, from a want of precision in the 
use of terms — the source of so many famous disputes. It has 
been said that a miracle is a violation of those laws of nature 
which have been ascertained by an unalterable experience. 
Now the argument, that those books which tell us that mira- 
cles have been a part of the experience of mankind, are false, 



60 THE CROSS. 

because they contradict the universal experience of mankind, 
is so obviously a begging of the question, and its fallacy has 
been so often exposed, that it would be folly to notice it fur- 
ther. But I think there is some confusion of ideas in the 
assertion that a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature. 
By this expression, " the laws of nature," I understand those 
relations between antecedents and consequents, established 
by the will of the Supreme Lawgiver, relations which in gen- 
eral produce uniform results, that His creatures may know 
how to regulate their own conduct, and to estimate the forces 
around them. But an interruption of the usual uniformity of 
nature, the exact definition of a miracle, is not necessarily a 
violation of those laws. It merely requires an extraordinary 
disposition of the same substances and forces which have 
covered the earth and garnished the heavens with wonders, 
that do not confound us, simply because they are common. 
When Christ turned the water into wine, he was under no 
necessity to create a single new force or set aside any of the 
relations of cause and effect, but simply to dispose the mate- 
rials, all of which were at hand, in a much shorter time than 
usual, for nature is doing in a few months, all over the vine- 
clad hills of France and Germany, precisely what the Divine 
Chemist effected in a moment. 

The resuscitation of a dead man is no greater miracle than 
the entire renewal of the living body, which physiologists 
tell us is effected every few years. We are, every now and 
then, startled by some surprising discovery of the hitherto 
unknown capabilities of nature, and all the occult properties 
and laws required for bringing about that most stupendous 
of miracles — the resurrection, not of an individual only, but 
of the entire population of the grave — may be now in exist- 
ence, and only waiting for Divine power to make the neces- 
sary arrangements to bring them into play. 

But the truth is, that much more importance has been 



THE CROSS. 61 

attached to the argument from miracles than it deserves. 
The miracles ascribed to Christ and his apostles, however 
conclusive to those who witnessed them, are no evidence to 
us, until by other means, we have established the truth of the 
writings which record them, — that is to say, until we have 
proved all that we wish to prove. They cannot weigh a fea- 
ther with any clear-headed inquirer, who does not find in 
Christianity a supply of his own moral wants, the proper and 
wholesome food of his own spiritual nature and the source of 
countless blessings to society. A syllogism may suffice for a 
single barren proposition ; a vast system of life-giving truth 
like Christianity draws to its support a variety of independ- 
ent, but mutually corroborating testimonies. Combining the 
early monuments of Christianity and the evidence which 
may be drawn from the history of the Christian civilization, 
with those convictions that spring up in every healthy soul, 
when its higher faculties are aroused into activity, we have 
an edifice which may defy the assaults of sceptical philoso- 
phy- 

One mind will attach greater weight to one portion of this 
converging evidence ; another to another, according to men- 
tal constitution or early habits of thinking. It is probable 
that for the majority of enlightened believers at the present 
day, the key-stone of the arch which spans the gulf between 
earth and heaven, is that sort of persuasion in which deep 
feeling has a much larger share than cold logic. Light alone 
without heat may play upon its surface, but will never reach 
the deepest truths. The cold glitter of the logical under- 
standing discloses a desert of rock and ice, where the moral 
nature would starve, but the warmth of love pierces to the 
germs of life and beauty that are hidden below, and covers 
the earth with the bowers of poetry and the fruits of Para- 
dise. 

Mark how the warm faith of a loving soul melts the ice 



62 THE CROSS. 

with which the wintry philosophy of scepticism wraps the 
dwellings of the departed. He who has stood by the grave 
of a dear wife or child, and while the hot tears have fallen 
upon the clay which wrapped the form of one who had been 
to him the life of life, — has recollected that the Son of God 
himself died and rose again, as the first fruits of them that 
sleep in the dust, and has looked across the dark valley and 
beheld a glorious morning break over the dreary earth, and 
that loved one arise and stand upon a renovated world, in the 
radiant glow of immortal youth and beauty, — has a witness 
within himself of the truth of religion, to which all miracles 
and other historical evidences whatsoever are merely subsid- 
iary. 

The most indubitable miracle of early Christianity was the 
heroic self-devotion of its first propagators. The Apostle of 
the Gentiles, of all mere men the sublimest example of moral 
heroism, travelled from j)lace, supporting himself and his 
companions by the labor of his own hands, and preaching the 
the truth without fee or reward ; well assured, that in what- 
soever city he entered, bonds and afflictions awaited him. 
He fought with wild beasts at Ephesus ; he braved the cru- 
elty of the pagans and the hatred of his own countrymen ; 
he stood undazzled amid the classic glories of Athens and 
the wonders of Grecian art, and proclaimed the new doctrine, 
unmoved by the sneers of the gayest, the most refined, the 
most intellectual people on earth. Dragged in chains before 
the proconsuls of Asia, he made them tremble on their 
judgment seats ; he planted the cross upon the seven hills, at 
the very gates of the vast palaces of those terrible Caesars, 
who made the world tremble from the borders of Ethiopia to 
the shores of the German Ocean ; and crowned his glorious 
life by a cruel death, amidst the ferocious sports of the am- 
phitheatre. 

I need not dwell upon the history of the new religion, which 



THE CROSS. 63 

steadily gained ground, overthrowing temples and altars, 
until the eagle of imperial Rome veiled his eye of fire before 
the Cross ; and reverently taking in his talons that ensign of 
a spiritual conqueror, bore it in triumph to the ends of the 
earth. 

We now, I trust, have a general view of the laws, the 
institutions, the literature and religion which were brought 
together by Rome, and consolidated into a broad foundation 
for the Christian civilization. One more element was want- 
ing. — It was necessary that the principle of unity which had 
heretofore confined the human faculties within narrow limits 
to a few well defined objects, and had merged the man in 
the citizen or subject, should give place to liberty, to a wider 
range of individual and national development, — a develop- 
ment which has been tumultuous and disorderly enough, as 
will appear from the next discourse. 



II 



NIGHT AND MORNING. 



NIGHT AND MORNING. 



In our hasty progress through the wilderness of history, 
we will be guided by great landmarks, and fly from one 
mountain-top to another, whence views may be obtained of 
boundless regions sunlit by Divine philosophy ; leaving it to 
inquirers of greater leisure, learning and ability, to explore 
the intermediate valleys. 

The last discourse brought us to the time when Christian- 
ity became the religion of Rome — a period which has been 
fixed upon as the dividing line between ancient and modern 
history. 

The adventurer in Central America, after climbing over 
range after range of volcanic hills, rising one above another, 
at length stood upon the dividing summit from which he 
could see both oceans at once. Turning from the blue At- 
lantic, its storms and its islands of tropical beauty, before 
him lay the dark-heaving Pacific, rolling away under the cloud 
of immensity to those glorious climes, where the dreams of 
the west had located the paradise of earth. So, at the pres- 
ent stage of our inquiry, we stand upon the stone, that Dan- 
iel saw cut out of the mountain without hands, now grown 
into a sky-piercing pinnacle, overlooking the ancient and the 
modern world. Behind us are the fairy isles of the ancient 
civilization ; before us another part of the ocean of eternity, 
where we may trace the courses of richly freighted argosies, 
some of which have sunk under the waves of time, while 
others are still ploughing their way into the boundless future, 
towards what final destiny is known only to Him whose eye 



68 NIGHT AND MORNING. 

can pierce the clouds and darkness which rest upon that un- 
known deep. 

The political triumph of Christianity, under Constantine 
and his successors, was fatal to its purity. The alliance of 
Church and State has always engendered moral corruption 
and ecclesiastical tyranny. Even before the conversion cf 
Constantine, the love and humility which distinguished the 
founders of religion, were giving place to intolerant zeal and 
fierce disputes about dogmas that no mortal ever could un- 
derstand. 

The first Christians had been content to worship Christ as 
divine, without clearly defining the inscrutable relations be- 
tween the Father and the Son. The warm glow of love and 
devotion could dispense with a rigorous metaphysical accu- 
racy, which in truth, from the very nature of the subject, was 
unattainable. The attempts of philosophic theologians, from 
time to time, to give more scientific precision to the Christ- 
ian doctrine upon this subject, paved the way to the quarrel 
between Arius and Athanasius, which was finally decided in 
favor of the latter by the sword of the civil authority. Pro- 
fane wits have made it matter of jest, that two Greek words, 
differing only in a single letter, by which the tw r o parties 
vainly endeavored to designate something beyond the reach 
of the human faculties, divided the church and convulsed the 
empire. 

As human language is not flexible enough for distinctions 
too subtle to be grasped by the human understanding, it is 
not surprising that the best writers, and even the same 
writer, could be quoted on both sides of the Arian contro- 
versy. In attempting to fix a fluctuating abstraction, which 
would not bear the chains of a definition, the language of 
men might incline to the one side or the other, according to 
the point cf view from which they endeavored to form to 
themselves a distinct notion of what was in itself inconceiv- 



NIGHT AND MORNING. 69 

able. There is, in fact, no substantial distinction, such at 
least as the human mind is capable of apprehending, between 
the doctrine of Arius and that of the Nicene council. 

Meanwhile, that free and etherial essence, which had 
hitherto bound Christian societies together, warming each 
heart with fire from Heaven, began to crystalize, if I may 
be allowed the expression, into a Church, with an organiza- 
tion strong enough to withstand the storms that were about 
to burst upon the empire, and shelter from their fury some 
remnants of the ancient civilization. 

The primitive equality of the humble presbyters gave 
place to a regular graduation of episcopal rank, which, cor- 
responding with the distribution of the civil authority, was 
crowned by the patriarchal sees of Rome and Constantino- 
ple. Under the later emperors the episcopal authority in the 
corporate cities was not confined to spiritual matters. This 
is a fact to which I wish to call the especial attention of the 
reader. I have already remarked, that one of the great ele- 
ments of civilization which the Roman empire bequeathed to 
the modern world, was her municipal institutions, in other 
words, cities engaged in various branches of industry, with a 
regular, and to some extent an independent police. In the 
latter years of the empire, the chief power in many of the 
towns fortunately fell into the hands of the bishops, who by 
their moral power over the barbarians, w T ere enabled in a 
great measure to protect the capitals of their dioceses from 
the ravages of the northern invaders. Thus, under the shel- 
tering wing of the Christian church, the municipal institu- 
tions of Rome survived the wreck of the empire, to become, 
as we shall see hereafter, the germs of the modern Democracy. 
Thus, the church, at first supported by the state, was finally 
enabled to repay the debt, by protecting civil society from 
utter disorganization. 

The simplicity of the early worship was supplanted by a 



70 NIGHT AND MORNING. 

splendid ritual, adapted to strike the imaginations of our bar- 
barous ancestors, part of which was borrowed from the pagan 
temples, but was none the worse for that — any more than 
the classic architecture of the buildings themselves, many of 
which were converted into Christian churches. Music, 
painting, sculpture, architecture, ceremonies — what are all 
these things but modes in which men strive to give expres- 
sion to the deep sense of beauty and sublimity, which often 
swells their souls with emotions too vast and too indefinite for 
articulate utterance. 

It need not surprise us that even Christianity could not 
regenerate the Roman people, from whom all freedom and 
energy departed under the ruthless tyranny of the Caesars. 
Every corrupt society and every absolute despotism may 
reach a stage of disease, in which no remedy can be effectual 
without an infusion of new life and energy from some exter- 
nal source. Moral and intellectual culture, which gradually 
softens and regulates the robust energies of barbarous free- 
dom, only adds to the weakness of enervate and spiritless 
slavery. 

I have before remarked that, as the preservation of the 
natural body requires that fair play be given to all its func- 
tions, so the health and durability of society of the body 
politic, requires a free development of all its capabilities. In 
the rear of the moral and intellectual chambers of the brain, 
are the equally God-created organs of the passioiis and pro- 
pensities, and without a proportionate energy of these pro- 
pelling forces of humanity, which give fixedness and intensity 
to the will, the former make but a feeble character. The 
moral part of our nature finds its most wholesome food in 
the Christian religion, the intellectual and semi-intellectual 
faculties feed upon science and literature, the passions and 
propensities grow strong in the eager pursuit and acquisition 
of wealth, fame, power, domestic pleasures, and the endless 



NIGHT AND MORNING. 71 

variety of objects that minister to worldly enjoyment. Now 
the element which was wanting in the Roman empire, and 
the progressive evolution of which is the key of modern 
history, was liberty, which is nothing more nor less than a 
free and harmonious development of the wlwle man, as an 
individual and as a member of society. The glorious facts 
of modern history, the soul-stirring grandeur and mighty 
progress of the Christian civilization, have been produced by 
great energy of the various properties of our nature, involv- 
ing perpetual antagonism ; inasmuch as power of every sort 
is infinitely expansive, and incessantly strives for absolute 
mastery. 

It is true that the ideal perfection of man and society, in 
short, of every organization, consists in the unbroken harmo- 
ny of all the forces acting in it ; but then there are all sorts 
of harmony, from the jingling of a jews-harp to the music 
of the spheres ; and unless all the chords of the spiritual harp, 
from which a Divine hand extracts the music of humanity, 
were at once miraculously replaced, by which the idea of 
progress would be excluded, discord must intervene between 
the lower and the higher harmony. That moral music of 
humanity was destined to rise through the trumpet-blasts of 
war, the thunder-drum of revolution, the crash of falling 
empires, and even the death-song of dissolving worlds, to that 
lofty anthem, which shall roll forever through the star-fretted 
arches of the " palace of eternity." 

The Roman empire had done its allotted work, in laying a 
deep and broad foundation for the Christian civilization, and 
now the deadening unity of an absolute despotism was to 
give place to tumultuous life, to spontaneity, to Liberty. 
Let us turn to those regions, whence the infusion of barbar- 
ous freedom and energy was to be poured into the flaccid 
veins of the Roman body. 

The people who, from time immemorial, had inhabited all 



72 NIGHT AND MORNING. 

the northern and western parts of Europe, may be distin- 
guished into the Celtic and German nations. The Celts, 
who inhabited the British isles, Spain and the greater part of 
France, seem to have had more fire and vivacity than the 
Germans; yet so great was the similarity, that a picture of 
the manners of any one of the numerous tribes included un- 
der these two general appellations, would answer with little 
variation for the whole. The Gauls, a Celtic tribe, three 
centuries before Christ, carried their arms into Greece and 
Italy, and even took the city of Rome, but as they were im- 
pelled, rather by a restless love of war and plunder, than by 
the desire of making permanent conquests, they were easily 
bought off, and the republic was saved from irretrievable 
ruin. Their mode of fighting was mailed by the extreme 
of savage ferocity, and they rushed upon their enemies, less 
with the courage of soldiers, than with the fury of madmsn. 
They formed the main strength of the army of Hannibal, 
and it tasked to the utmost the unrivalled skill and resources 
of Julius Coesar to subdue these fierce barbarians. But they 
were subdued — Spain, Gaul and Britain became Roman 
provinces, made great advances in civilization, and adopted 
to a great extent the Latin tongue, which, more or less cor- 
rupted by provincialisms and admixture of native idioms, 
gave rise to what are called the Romance languages. 

Far other and mightier destinies were reserved for the 
German tribes. Under this general name I include the 
Gothic and Vandalic nations, who, emigrating at an early 
period from Scandinavia, took possession of the country 
lying between the Baltic and the Black seas. Here they 
mixed to such an extent with their neighbors of the Sclavonic 
family, that the northern limits of ancient Germany are some- 
what indefinite. 

While the Celts, as already remarked, were subdued by 
the arms and civilized by the laws and municipal institutions 



NIGHT AND MORNING, 73 

and the literature of Rome, the Germans maintained their 
rude independence. Though often defeated by the legions, 
it sometimes came to their turn to exact a terrible revenge, 
and national pride still dwells upon the name of Herman or 
Arminius, as it has been Latinized, who decoyed a Roman 
army into the depths of his native forests, and destroyed it 
utterly. 

As our American liberty had its origin in the German 
forests, we may dwell with some detail upon the manners of 
our ferocious ancestors. Imagine a village of wooden huts 
upon the margin of a river, surrounding a building of great- 
er size but equally rude construction, in which the councils 
and wild revels of the tribe are held. A body of men of 
tall stature and noble forms, some on foot, some on horse- 
back, their flaxen locks falling upon their shoulders, their 
sanguine complexions glowing with health, their clear blue 
eyes lighted up with the animation of the chase, and armed 
with long spears and bows and arrows, leave the small patch 
of cultivated ground, and plunge into the trackless forest in 
pursuit of the deer and wild boar. In the evening they re- 
turn loaded with game, the women prepare a mighty feast, 
and the warriors take their seats around the rude table on 
which it is spread. Beside them are their swords, and their 
drinking cups made of the skulls of enemies they have slain in 
battle. Having satisfied their savage appetites, they fill their 
ghastly goblets with home-brewed beer, or with the fiery 
wines which they have brought away from their last foray 
into Gaul or Italy. Then ensue fierce quarrels in which 
swords clash and blood flows, and the drowsy ear of night is 
vexed with a hideous uproar of revelry and rage. 

Take another scene. The chiefs have recommended some 
warlike enterprise, and the great council of the tribe, in 
which all the warriors who have reached the age of maturi- 
ty, have an equal voice, has met to deliberate upon the mea- 
7 



74 NIGHT AND MORNING. 

sure. An orator rises, and sets forth with rude but power- 
ful eloquence the wrongs of other times, or the glory and 
booty to be gathered in the Roman provinces. He is an- 
swered by a fierce clashing of swords and shields, and the 
shouts of his approving audience. Then to inflame the ar- 
dor of the warriors, the bards sing the exploits of Odin 
and the ancient heroes, and promise to all who fall in battle, 
an immediate entrance into the star-paved dwelling of the 
Gods. In a storm of frenzied enthusiasm, the crowd rushes 
into the dark forests and in the awful twilight of that natural 
temple a mighty fire is kindled, on which the priests offer 
human sacrifices to the God of war. The whole tribe then 
prepare to remove, taking with them their families and as 
much of their property, as they can find means of transport- 
ing. 

When they were about to meet the enemy, the Germans 
were in the habit of placing their women and children within 
a circle formed of their carts and wagons. If their husbands 
and brothers were cut to pieces, the women sometimes main- 
tained the fight with masculine courage, and when all hope 
was at an end, saved their freedom and honor by putting an 
end to their own lives. 

The German chiefs were freely chosen by the people, and 
though birth was not entirely disregarded, the principal 
grounds of preference were superior courage and ability. 
Their power seems to have been limited to leading the war- 
riors to battle, and presiding in the popular assemblies, to 
which all important measures were submitted. 

It forms no part of the plan of these essays to follow in 
detail the frequent inroads of the German tribes upon the 
declining empire, nor that final inundation which well nigh 
swept away the humanity and civilization of the ancient 
world. The struggles of the expiring empire were tremen- 
dous, and sometimes, as on the plains of Chalons for example, 



NIGHT AND MORNING. 75 

revived the recollection of her former glory. When she 
finally sunk under the repeated blows of her inexorable as- 
sailants, Europe presented a scene of wo and conflagration 
and bloodshed and ruffian violence, such as no pen can de- 
scribe, nor any imagination conceive. The world resounded 
with the shouts of licentious and blood-thirsty savages, and 
the shrieks of their helpless victims. Art, learning, refine- 
ment seemed to have perished forever in that deluge of bar- 
barism. 

A considerable period after the fall of the western empire 
is almost a blank in history. The dim gigantic forms of men 
and things flit shadowy through the night, for a time un- 
touched even by that golden aurora of mythical poetry which 
always heralds the dawn of authentic history. But happily 
for mankind, religion survived the general ruin, and when 
the smoke and dust-clouds that hovered over the wrecks of a 
demolished world began to disperse, the first glimmer of 
returning light discloses the dove of Christianity winging 
her flight over that wild, weltering chaos, with the olive- 
branch in her mouth, and shaking from her heavenly plumage 
the seeds of a new and mightier civilization. As of old, 
when the spirit of God moved upon the great deep, green 
islets, emerging from the dreary waste, spring up in myr- 
tle bowers of poetry and art, and then the broad, firm earth, 
begins to appear, teeming with the germs of that vigorous 
growth, which in after ages was to yield the peaceable 
fruits of order and liberty, of productive industry and na- 
tional prosperity. Let us rapidly trace the progress of these 
changes before entering upon the great revolutions of modern 
society. 

As the literature of Greece conquered the Romans, so the 
religion of Rome triumphed over the barbarians. Even in 
that enfeebled and corrupt society, which was overrun by the 
northern invaders, enough of moral and intellectual power 



76 NIGHT AND MORNING. 

remained to assert the rightful supremacy of mind over phy- 
sical force. Some of the German tribes had been converted 
to Christianity in their native forests by Arian missionaries. 
Nevertheless, had the empire been overthrown at once by 
the first great irruption from the northern hive, the triumph 
of the barbarians might have been fatal to civilization. But 
the struggle was fortunately protracted; many of the barbar- 
ians even enlisted in the legions, and each successive swarm 
that poured down upon the empire found multitudes of their 
own countrymen who had adopted the manners and religion 
of the conquered provinces. Mixing among a Christian peo- 
ple and intermarrying with the subject provincials, or those of 
their own countrymen who had been converted to Christian- 
ity; witnessing the monastic austerities, which to their sensual 
and superstitious souls appeared miraculous ; admiring the 
imposing ritual of the churches, the dignity and unity of the 
hierarchy, the zeal, piety and learning of many of the clergy, 
the German tribes who established themselves in the con- 
quered provinces, were all, by one means or other, brought 
under the influence of religion. Satisfied with their undis- 
puted martial superiority, they the more willingly acknowl- 
edged the moral and mental advantages of the conquered, 
and knowing that they would always be masters of their 
teachers, they would be less reluctant to learn from them 
than from rivals in military prowess. 

Many of the chiefs may have professed religion from mo- 
tives of policy, hoping to find in the attachment of the sub- 
ject provincials — who, notwithstanding the wanton destruction 
of life and property, were still, in many parts of Europe, 
superior in wealth and numbers to their conquerors, — the 
means of curbing the pride and turbulence of their own 
refractory clansmen. Others were persuaded by their Christ- 
ian wives to lend a willing ear to the teachers of religion. 



NIGHT AND MORNING. 77 

Whatever might be the motives of the chief, his example was 
followed by all his warriors. 

It is difficult to estimate how much the modern world is 
indebted to female influence, exerted at this critical period in 
favor of a religion which finds its most congenial soil in the 
heart of woman. The history of the world might have been 
totally different from what it has been, but for Clotilda, the 
christian wife of the terrible Clovis, chief of the Salian 
Franks. By the conversion of her husband from heathenism, 
she was chiefly instrumental in bringing over to the side of 
the true religion the whole of that warlike tribe, who were 
afterwards the victorious defenders of the Christian civiliza- 
tion against the pagan Saxons and the Mohammedan Arabs. 
It will be recollected that to female influence must also be 
attributed the introduction of Christianity among the Anglo- 
Saxons. 

It required ages for the Christian religion, already ob- 
scured by superstition, to effect any appreciable change in 
the moral character of the barbarians. But the regard which 
they paid to the inviolable sanctity of religious institutions, of 
the churches, the monasteries and the persons of the ecclesi- 
astics, was productive of very important results. 

We shall have frequent occasion to observe how even the 
errors and excesses of men are laid under contribution by 
Providence for the promotion of beneficent purposes. To 
speak with greater precision, profound principles of human 
nature to meet particular exigencies of society, are developed 
with a power which is sure to run into excesses, and are em- 
bodied in institutions, which in a long course of time, espe- 
cially after they have done serving the purposes for which 
they were intended by Providence, become incrusted with 
manifold perversions and abuses, — the inevitable results of 
the imperfection of human nature. There is no better illus- 
tration of these remarks than the history of monasteries. 



7S NIGHT AND MORNING. 

Asceticism, the soul of monastic institutions, is deeply found- 
ed in nature and truth. In some form or other, it has 
appeared among the devotees of every religious system, from 
the Hindoo fakir, who stands motionless for years until his 
body is enclosed in a matted mass of vegetation, to the Cal- 
vinistic puritan, who proscribes all those delights of the 
senses and imagination which may divert the mind from the 
contemplation of divine things. This self-immolation, if con- 
fined to a sincere desire and constant effort, with Divine 
assistance, to bring our senses and our passions into subord- 
ination to the law of cur highest well-being, is right and pro- 
per. Transcending these limits, it may degenerate into that 
strange kind of spiritual ambition, which supported Simon 
Stylites on his pillar for so many years, exposed to the heat 
and storms of the Syrian deserts. 

Notwithstanding the absurd excesses of a few, I am not 
sure that we ought to censure the mode, in which asceticism 
generally manifested itself in the early church. Many per- 
sons of warm devotional feelings, disgusted with the vices 
then prevalent, and desirous to devote themselves wholly to 
the service of God, retired to the deserts of Upper Egypt 
and Syria, and spent their lives in prayer, mortification and 
hard work. Perhaps we take a little too much upon our- 
selves, when we pronounce these men misguided enthusiasts. 
Men's ideas of duty may in different conditions of society 
manifest themselves in different modes. If St. Anthony 
chose to live upon roots which he raised with his own hands, 
while furnishing an asylum to many poor creatures who were 
driven into the deserts by oppression and want, I do not 
know that any one had a right to complain. On the other 
hand, if it should appear that monastic institutions were ex- 
tremely useful in the sixth century, it by no means follows 
that they should be revived in the nineteenth. 

The ascetic spirit, first strongly developed in the east, 



NIGHT AND MORNING. 79 

spread rapidly over the Christian world ; and the dreadful 
disorders, which followed the downfall of the western em- 
pire, drove into the monasteries many men of high moral 
feelings and cultivated minds, who could have no peace or 
self-respect in a state of society, where brute force was the 
law, and physical qualities alone were regarded. The reli- 
gious houses became the secure repositories of the ancient 
learning ; and one of the principal occupations of the monks 
was copying manuscripts. In this way were preserved the 
Bible, and the literary remains of antiquity, which, after so- 
cial order had been at least partially reestablished, were 
brought forth from their hiding places, and awakened the 
intellect of the Germanic nations. The monasteries were 
useful in other respects. — Schools and hospitals were often 
connected with them. The vast property which they ac- 
quired by the donations of superstition and remorse, was, at 
least in the earlier ages, chiefly devoted to charitable uses, 
and at a later period, their lands furnished places of refuge 
from the tyranny of the feudal barons. 

Meanwhile the " eternal city" became the centre of a new 
spiritual dominion, which pervaded and gradually subdued 
the empire of physical force. Though many of the secular 
clergy were corrupt and ignorant enough, the ecclesiastical 
State, with the pope at its head, was undoubtedly the strong- 
hold of intellect and morals in their long warfare with ignor- 
ant and ferocious animalism. The little learning of the time 
was almost monopolized by the ecclesiastics, who alone had 
sufficient power over the minds of the barbarians to restrain 
their passions, and vindicate the supremacy of intellect over 
physical force. 

In this connection we must not overlook the important 
fact, that the Latin continued to be everywhere the language 
of the Church service, and of all ecclesiastical proceedings. 
Those walls of partition, which the rude dialects of the 



80 NIGHT AND MORNING. 

German tribes erected between the nations of Western 
Europe, might have been for ages impervious barriers to the' 
diffusion of knowledge, had not the necessities of the ehurcrj 
preserved a common medium of intercourse between the 
members of that great spiritual commonwealth, which per- 
vaded the entire Christian world. The liturgy, the script- 
ures, the writings of eminent theologians, the decrees of 
provincial synods and general councils were all in Latin, 
and thus the clergy, the most influential body of men in all 
the Christian countries, were obliged to know something of 
that language, and became, to that extent at least, identified 
with the protection and encouragement of learning. One 
of the best, perhaps the very best, means of mental discipline 
is the study of a language ©f very scientific structure and 
great compass of inflection. 

As already intimated, many of the cities, under the protec- 
tion of their bishops, survived the ruin of the empire, and 
though their importance was very much diminished, they 
preserved till happier times, some vestiges of their former 
prosperity and refinement. They were small points of light, 
scarcely visible for ages through the darkness that surround- 
ed them, but destined, at a subsequent period, to become the 
centres of a glorious radiation of intelligence and liberty. 

Here we have the rudiments of a robust, progressive and 
diversified civilization. The fierce independence and undis- 
ciplined energies of the German masters, the remnants of 
ancient institutions and maimers, preserved by the subject 
provincials, and the moral power of the church, restraining 
violence, protecting the weak, gradually taming the fierce 
passions of the conquerors, and in general asserting the su- 
premacy of mind over physical force. In that seething mass 
of blood and ashes, in which the ancient civilization had been 
trodden out, were sown broadcast the seeds of a new and 
better order of things. Those seeds had scarcely begun to 



NIGHT AND MORNING. 81 

germinate, when a new and terrible power arose in the east r 
which poured over Asia and Africa a resistless torrent of 
fiery valor, swept away the Gothic kingdom of Spain, and 
descending like an avalanche from the summits of the Pyre- 
nees, was stayed in its course by Karl the Hammer and his 
warlike Franks, who snatched Europe and civilization from 
the paralyzing grasp of the Moslem domination. 

The Arabs, to whom we are indebted for much of our 
knowledge, were undoubtedly a noble and intellectual people. 
Even the robbers of the desert have always been remarka- 
ble for hospitality, a free, magnanimous spirit, and a digni- 
fied simplicity of manners, that reminds the traveller of those 
beautiful pictures of patriarchal life which we find in the 
Bible. In the Arabian peninsula, the peculiar spirit and 
striking features of oriental society have always been more 
fully developed, and more strongly marked than in any- 
other eastern country. In those primitive seats of the hu- 
man race, a burning sun, a brilliant sky, the strong contrasts 
of beauty and barrenness, the awful solitudes of black rocks- 
and limitless sands, the sparkling fountains shaded by palm 
trees, the pastoral valleys and tropical bowers, that load the 
gales with fragrance, the frequent revolutions and romantic 
vicissitudes of individuals, the vestiges and recollections of 
a glorious antiquity and a splendid civilization, all combined 
to produce a character unknown in the west, at the period of 
which we have been speaking, in any of its most beautiful 
and striking qualities. These qualities were least diluted by 
foreign admixtures among the Arabs, for the simple reason, 
that they alone, of all the eastern nations, had been able at 
all times, to maintain their independence. 

The foundation, or rather the vital principle, of those 
beautiful traits of eastern life, which were destined, by means 
of the Mohammedan conquests, to be embroidered, as it 
were, upon the stronger but coarser ground of western 



82 NIGHT AND MORNING. 

character, was an excessive poetical enthusiasm, which trans- 
ported the mind into a land of dreams more beautiful than 
the gardens of the Hesperides, and peopled with all the wild 
creations of oriental imagination. It was this noble idealism 
which inspired the disdain of vulgar engrossments, the love of 
literature and science, the romantic generosity, the delicate 
courtesy and refinement of sentiment which distinguished the 
Arab conquerors of Spain, from whom was borrowed much 
of the spirit of western chivalry, and of the inspiration of 
Provencal poetry. 

Like most great men of action, Mohammed was an em- 
bodiment of the peculiarities of his own people in the highest 
degree of intensity. Born and brought up in poverty and 
obscurity, he scarcely acquired even the rudiments of knowl- 
edge. But he possessed an independent and penetrating 
mind, a powerful though undisciplined imagination, and 
much generous enthusiasm for the great and the beautiful. 
The underlying principle of his nature, which imparted an 
overpowering energy to the whole mass of his moral and 
intellectual qualities, was a fiery and unquenchable ambition 
to place himself at the head of a great movement of society. 
He was no doubt unconscious of the extent to which this 
love of power mixed up with his more generous impulses, 
for self-deception is the most common of all delusions. 

I do not believe that a mere imposture ever obtained a 
lasting hold upon the human mind. No one will meet with 
deep and lasting sympathy who is not in earnest himself. 
He may indeed, upon the principle that the end justifies the 
means, employ claptrap and dissimulation for the accomplish- 
ment of what appears to him a great and good purpose. 
Something of the Charlatan may appear upon the surface of 
such characters as Mohammed and Cromwell and Napoleon, 
and even a Luther may not be free from selfishness and dis- 
simulation and vulgar truculence, yet there lies at the bottom 



NIGHT AND MORNING. 83 

of all such great natures a generous and heart-felt conviction 
that they have a mission from God, and a great work to do 
in the world, and they are straitened until it be accomplished. 
The mighty heart of a great people will not heave in obedi- 
ence to anything but enthusiastic earnestness. A purely 
selfish man, a mere impostor, never did and never can gain a 
lasting hold upon the loyalty of large masses of his fellow- 
men. 

To comprehend the motives of Mohammed, one should 
take a view of that moral chaos of follies and abuses, which, 
in his time, had overspread not only Arabia, but all the eas- 
tern countries. Many of his own countrymen were given 
up to a gross and despicable idolatry; the minds of the 
remainder were over-clouded by the ridiculous fables of the 
Jewish Talmud, or the equally absurd perversions of a bastard 
Christianity. It is easy to conceive that such a state of 
things would be extremely unsatisfactory to an earnest and 
inquiring mind, and the knowledge which Mohammed gained 
by his trading journeys into Syria, of the vain wranglings 
that tore to pieces the eastern churches, as well as the world- 
liness and corruption of most of the ecclesiastics, was not 
calculated to diminish his perplexity. Under these circum- 
stances we are told that he often retired to a cave in the 
neighborhood of Mecca, where he brooded over the moral 
condition of the world, and conceived his enthusiastic pur- 
pose of restoring the worship of the one true and invisible 
God. Every physiologist will readily understand how such 
contemplations in such a seclusion would be likely to affect 
an ardent and imaginative mind. 

He first opened his enterprise to his wife and a few friends, 
who warmly seconded his views. Had he met with the same 
kind reception from the rest of his countrymen, he would 
probably have contented himself with recalling their minds 
in an impressive manner to those great truths, one of which 



84 NIGHT AND MORNING. 

they had almost entirely lost sight of — the unity of God and 
future retribution. But the relentless persecutions of his 
enemies roused all his fiery energies and vindictive passions. 
It was easy to persuade himself (for the passions are great 
sophists) that the illusions of a heated imagination were rev- 
elations from Heaven. Yet when he described that paradise 
of sensual delights, which is assuredly the worst feature of 
his system, the calculations of policy may have mingled with 
his enthusiasm, for he doubtless well knew that nothing in- 
spires such unconquerable heroism as the rewards and pun- 
ishments of a future life, when brought home to the passions 
by corporeal images. 

The Christian revelation but partially lifts the mysterious 
veil which hides the retributions of eternity, and usually 
employs material imagery in a manner so vague and general, 
that grave theologians may as well content themselves with 
the abstract truth that love, humility and faith will be condu- 
cive to our highest well-being in that future state, while the 
opposite qualities must have the opposite effects, abandoning 
to poetic license the scenery and other corporeal details of 
the realms of light, and the kingdom of darkness. Moham- 
med, on the contrary, allotted to the faithful champion of 
Islam a voluptuous harem amid the bowers of Paradise. 
Let us imagine the slight, but active and sinewy Arab, 
mounted upon a horse of matchless speed and power, and 
fully persuaded that if he died in battle, he should be imme- 
diately carried by angels to the arms of the black-eyed 
nymphs of Paradise ; let us imagine, I say, a body of such 
men, sweeping down upon an enemy, like the whirlwind of 
their own deserts, and we shall have little difficulty in ac- 
counting for the fact, that in less than ninety years, the empire 
of the caliphs stretched from the frontiers of China to the 
straits of Gibraltar. 

The Arab conquests brought the eastern poetry, born and 



NIGHT AND MORNING. 85 

nurtured under bright suns and cloudless skies, amid the 
roses of Cashmere and the voluptuous bowers of Yemen, in 
contact with the more gigantic but gloomy conceptions of the 
western nations. If we further take into the account the 
moral ideas derived from the Christian religion, we shall have 
before us the sources of that noble though extravagant en- 
thusiasm which manifested itself in the romance and chivalry 
of the middle ages, and through them contributed largely to 
the progress of society in Christendom. 

The Mohammedan civilization was splended but epheme- 
ral. Everything that was beautiful about it concealed the 
fatal canker of sensuality. Mohammed borrowed largely 
from the records of Christianity, but he left behind its spirit. 
The life warfare against the world, the flesh and the senses, 
which Christ proclaimed, found no place in that system of 
pride, ambition and voluptuousness. The Moslem ascen- 
dancy had no strong principle of moral life, yet it was follow- 
ed by a brilliant epoch of learning and refinement. Without 
any deep root in everlasting truth, but springing up rapidly 
from the warm and quick soil of eastern life, it was covered 
with foliage and flowers, while the mighty tree of the Chris- 
tian civilization was still battling with the storm and slowly 
climbing into the heavens. 

The contrast of their subsequent history and present con- 
dition, is a triumphant vindication of Christianity, written by 
the hand of Providence upon the moral chart of the globe. 
Both have extended over the noblest tribes of the Caucasian 
race. All the Mohammedan nations, however diverse in 
physical circumstances, show a wonderful similarity of lead- 
ing characteristics. The fatal apathy, engendered by soulless 
despotism, uninquiring faith and emasculating sensuality, 
has for centuries been broken only by bloody paroxysms of 
ferocious bigotry. Even this last species of energy seems 
now to be extinct, and in contemplating the inevitable divis- 



86 NIGHT AND MORNING. 

ion of this effete body among the Christian powers, the only- 
difficulty is to determine which shall get the lion's share. 

Great disasters and destructive revolutions, under which 
the Mohammedan nations have sunk lower and lower into a 
bottomless abyss of hopeless degradation, have only developed 
the dormant energies and exhaustless resources of the Chris- 
tian family, who like Anteus have arisen with fresh vigor from 
every temporary overthrow. While the litanic carcase of Mo- 
hammedanism is rotting off from the earth which it polluted, 
the giant of Christian civilization after a turbulent childhood of 
a thousand years, is even now in the full vigor of youth, ex- 
tending his arms to encircle the globe. 

Even a long continuance of civil and spiritual despotism 
has failed to produce its usual effects in Christendom. Men 
now living have seen a great nation throw off a profligate 
tyranny of centuries' standing, with a convulsive effort that 
shook the whole world. They have seen her bleeding at 
every pore, and sheeted in a storm of fire by the despots of 
Europe leagued to restore the ancient dynasty. And when 
the smoke of her thousand battles had finally rolled away, 
they have seen her not grasping in the agonies of death, but, 
with renovated life, preparing for a new and more glorious 
career. Let us now search in the chaos of the middle ages 
for the elements of this astonishing vitality of the Christian 
civilization. 

The fierce tribes of Germany, as already stated, followed 
to battle and conquest chieftains freely chosen by themselves, 
and allowed them a portion of the spoils and conquered ter- 
ritory, sufficient to support their dignity, but all substantial 
power was lodged in the assemblies of the people, and each 
warrior claimed for himself privileges incompatible with the 
necessary restraints of government. The original inhabit- 
ants of the conquered provinces were left in possession of a 
large proportion of the land, the remainder of which was 



NIGHT AND MORNING. 87 

divided among the barbarians, who held it at first allodially, 
that is to say without any obligation of fealty or service to 
superiors. 

The large tracts allotted to the chiefs in the original parti- 
tion of the conquered territory, were intended not only to 
support their dignity, but to serve as a fund for the reward 
of civil and military service. As the new establishments of 
the German tribes assumed something of the regularity of 
civil government, the chief, to whom we may now give the 
appellation of King, made large grants of the reserved lands 
to his favorites or to officers who had rendered eminent ser- 
vices to the State, to be held of him on certain conditions. — 
These grants became the germs of that singular system of 
feuds, which has been the source of mamy of the peculiarities 
of modern civilization. 

In the absence of a regular constitution, the practical 
power of the King depended entirely upon his personal 
qualities. Unless he happened to possess extraordinary en- 
ergy and sagacity, his turbulent officers and clansmen left 
him little more than the shadow of royal authority. Out of 
the disorders of weak reigns grew the feudal system. It 
does not make its appearance in history until the sceptre of 
the Franks had passed from the iron hands of Charlemagne 
to those of his imbecile posterity. That great monarch, busy 
as he was with the reorganization of society and the defence 
and propagation of Christianity, kept in his own hands the 
chief control of the royal domains, and permitted no interme- 
diate power to grow up between himself and his warriors. 
But after his death his empire was broken in pieces, and 
amid the disorders that followed, the Counts of provinces 
and other great chieftains granted the landed property of the 
state on conditions of fealty and service not to the sovereign 
but to themselves. Thus the states of western Europe 
became little more than bundles of feudal barons, scarcely 



88 NIGHT AND MORNING. 

held together by a formal acknowledgment of the central 
authority. This was especially true of France when the 
feudal system attained its fullest development. 

The haughty barons claimed the right among others of re- 
dressing their own real or imaginary grievances by private 
war, and descended from their strong castles, perched like 
eagles nests among crags and forests, followed by bands of 
blood-thirsty retainers, to ravage the lands and slaughter the 
vassals of their enemies. In the perpetual quarrels of the 
rival chieftains, the most wanton outrages were frequently 
perpetrated upon the allodial proprietors, who were thus 
reduced to the necessity of purchasing the protection of some 
neighboring lord by giving up their land to him and taking 
it back on the feudal conditions. Thus the feudal tenures, 
which were at first very limited, gradually supplanted the 
allodial independence. 

There was but little servility in the feudal relations. The 
obligations were reciprocal, and either party by the neglect 
or infraction of them, lost all claims upon the other. The 
tenant, scrupulous in complying with the conditions of the 
compact on his part, would on that very account be the more 
tenacious of his rights. If they were violated by his lord he 
might transfer his allegiance to some other chief, who would 
always be glad to strengthen himself against his rival by the 
acquisition of new retainers upon liberal conditions. 

In France, the native soil of feuds, the great barons claim- 
ed the most enormous privileges and left to the crown the mere 
shadow of royal authority. The history of that country for 
ages is the history of a perpetual struggle between the kings 
and their haughty and turbulent vassals. But in England, 
where the system was hardly ever completely naturalized, 
the barons were compelled to court popularity, and there 
they became powerful guardians of popular rights. In both 
countries they were the chief, if not the only counterpoise 



NIGHT AND MORNING, 39 

to the central power, until the cities acquired sufficient con- 
sequence to act an important part in European politics. 

As the harmony of the natural world is the balance of pow- 
ers, either of which being infinitely expansive, would, if unre- 
strained, hurry the whole system into chaos, or consolidate it 
into one mass of lifeless matter, so the only kind of political 
order, which is compatible with the freedom and dignity of 
man, results from the antagonism of classes, interests or ten- 
dencies. In a society, like these of Europe in the middle 
ages, full of energy and turbulent individuality and clashing 
interests, each of the social forces will rule in its turn, as the 
re-action of those which, though repressed, are not subdued, 
brings them in succession to the head of society. They 
never can subside into an organization so perfect, that some 
one of them at a time will not be clearly in the ascendant. 
But wo to that people who suffer any one of the social pow- 
ers to gain absolute mastery. When all antagonism ceases, 
justice and liberty are at an end. Even the most furious 
strife in church or state is better than the unity and repose of 
absolute despotism. 

If we would find the sources of our American liberty, of 
the extraordinary vigor and expansiveness of European civ- 
ilization, we must look for them in the apparent anarchy of 
the middle ages, the riotous and energetic individuality, the 
great diversity of interests and the tierce struggles of classes 
and tendencies. In my next discourse I shall have occasion 
to apply these remarks to the reformation, and the unques- 
tionable superiority of Protestant over Catholic countries. 
At present I shall confine myself to their political bearings. 

The germs of a noble and vigorous freedom can be clear- 
ly discerned in the feudal constitutions. It is true that the 
rude condition of the laws, and the weakness of the civil 
magistrates gave impunity to much violence and outrage. 
The true principles of social order were little understood, 
S 



90 NIGHT AND MORNING. 

and perhaps no one had the least conception of that ideal of 
political society, which is the goal of modern progress, in 
which the wisest and best are placed at the head of affairs by 
the free voice of the people, where the limits of authority 
are clearly defined, and where the powers of the state are 
distributed among those who, by the tenure of their offices, 
have not only the disposition but the ability to preserve their 
respective shares from the encroachments of the other de- 
partments. Is it national pride which whispers, that to my 
own country is reserved the glorious destiny of showing to 
the world the nearest approach to the ideal of society, which 
the frailty of man will permit] 

The similar circumstances of the western nations gave rise 
to similar institutions. We may select the constitution of 
Aragon as the most perfect example of feudal liberty. Here 
the king could do nothing without the sanction of the legis- 
lative assembly, and both were held in check by a great 
officer, the justiciary, who was charged with the defence of 
the constitution, and the guardianship of the rights and priv- 
ileges of all classes. 

It will be recollected that among the German tribes, the 
great council, to which all important measures were submit- 
ted, consisted of all the warriors who had reached maturity. 
After their establishments in the Roman provinces had ac- 
quired something of the regularity of civil states, it was found 
necessary to reduce the vast and tumultuous assemblies cf 
the people to smaller bodies, composed of the feudal nobility, 
the clergy, and the representatives of inferior land-holders, 
to whom were added at a subsequent period, the delegates of 
chartered towns. In France, besides the states-general, as 
the national legislature was called, there were provincial as- 
semblies in each of the great baronies, composed in the same 
manner, and possessed of the same powers. The great 
principle which, as we shall find hereafter, has played so 



NIGHT AND MORNING. 91 

important a part in English history, that no taxes can be lev- 
ied without the consent of all the orders of the legislative 
body, seems to have been more or less clearly recognized in 
all the constitutions of the feudal ages. 

While the barons were fighting among themselves and 
disputing with the crown the prerogatives of sovereignty, 
and the clergy were representing that moral power of reli- 
gion, which gradually tamed the ferocious passions of those 
rude ages, and silently permeated society with juster notions 
of the rights and duties of men, another element of social 
organization was slowly gaining ground, which was destined 
to fill a very important place in the history, not only of con- 
stitutional order and liberty, but of art, literature and scien- 
tific discovery. 

As we have already remarked, one of the great bequests 
of the expiring empire of Rome to modern civilization, was 
municipal institutions, in other words, cities with a regular 
internal police. After her highly civilized provinces had 
come under the sway of ignorant barbarians, the craftsmen 
and traders of the towns may have found safety in the con- 
tempt of a martial people, who in their native forests had 
lived in wooden huts and clothed themselves with skins. 
But the most powerful defenders of municipal institutions 
were the bishops, into whose hands the government of their 
diocesan capitals had fallen in the latter years of the empire. 

Amid the darkness and storms of the early ages, the cities 
disappear from history for a time and were doubtless very 
much reduced in population and importance. But the Ger- 
man tribes, mingling with a more refined though subject 
people, were not long in acquiring a taste for luxury and 
splendor, especially in arms and military equipments, and the 
manufacturing industry of the cities began to revive. It is 
interesting to think of the thousands of humble and forgotten 
artizans, who toiled from day to day in the dust and heat of 



92 NIGHT AND MORNING. 

their forges, making swords and chain armour and other arti- 
cles of still greater value, utterly unconscious of the mighty- 
revolutions which lurked in their strong arms and patient 
hearts. Little did they dream that every blow which fell 
upon their anvils, was striking off a link from the chain that 
fettered the intellect and social progress of the western world. 
Little did the haughty barons, who were beginning to adorn 
the halls of their strong castles with the fabrics of the cities, 
imagine that the shuttle of the despised weaver was making 
a mighty network which would one day envelope their own 
descendants in its fatal meshes, and drag them down from 
their high places. No effort of honest industry ever was nor 
ever can be lost. Everlasting honor to the dukes and vis- 
counts and marquises of the nobility of labor. 

Trade and manufactures slowly revived and the cities in- 
creased their population by affording shelter to the wretched 
provincials, who were driven from their blazing cottages and 
devastated fields by the bloody feuds of ferocious chieftains. 
The princes and barons were often in want of money to carry 
on their perpetual contests with rivals or turbulent vassals, 
which they obtained from the cities within their domains, on 
condition of granting to them by charter certain privileges 
and immunities, which were from time to time extended 
and fortified by additional guaranties. The people of the 
towns thus acquired the right of electing their own magis- 
trates, whose jurisdiction usually extended over a considera- 
ble part of the adjacent country. The cities of Italy, which 
enjoyed the advantage of being under the more especial 
protection of the church, became so powerful at a very early 
period, as to defy the utmost efforts of the German emperors 
to break down their independence. There the nobility, in- 
stead of secluding themselves in their castles, resided in the 
towns and acquired great wealth by commerce, which began 
to be carried on with the East. A taste for intellectual pur- 



NIGHT AND MORNING. 93 

suits gradually sprang up ; the study of the Latin literature 
was revived ; the treasures of antiquity were brought forth 
from the monasteries, and hundreds of men made their living 
by copying manuscripts ; universities were founded and stu- 
dents nocked to them from every part of Europe, eager to 
drink of the streams of knowledge which had been sealed up 
for ages. In other parts of Europe, the representatives of 
the cities were early admitted as a constituent part of the 
legislative assemblies, and their franchises were similar, 
though inferior in extent, to those of the Italian republics. 

The internal police and social organization of the char- 
tered towns were very much alike in all parts of Europe. 
Their ancient customs were reduced to certainty, and usual- 
ly embodied in the charters of incorporation, but the com- 
mon councils had the right to make bye-laws not inconsis- 
tent with those settled rules. The administration of jus- 
tice and the entire internal regulation were lodged in the 
hands of magistrates, freely chosen by the people. Here the 
ballot-box, the symbol of representative democracy, first 
makes its appearance in modern history. 

The citizens were divided into classes or guilds according 
to their respective trades, each of which had its appropriate 
banner, and was trained to the use of arms, and accustomed 
to military exercises. These artizans often defended their 
towns against the feudal tyrants, with a heroism uncon- 
querable even by the extremity of famine. In the chartered 
cities we must look for the chief sources of that democratic 
tendency of modern times, which has shaken nearly all the 
thrones of Europe. They were the nurseries of that intel- 
ligent, and orderly, but high spirited middle class, which has 
taken so large a share in all those great struggles for free- 
dom, that have made the last three centuries the most stirring 
period of history. One of these cities, fenced by the Alps 
from the storms of the middle ages and the tyranny of the 



94 NIGHT AND MORNING. 

dukes of Savoy, was destined, as we shall see hereafter, to 
become the nursery of that mighty Calvimstic republican- 
ism, which, after striking in England the first effectual blows 
in the modern warfare of liberty against power, has reached 
its greatest expansion in the forests of the new world. 

We have now taken a rapid view of those great elements 
of political organization, whose conflicting interests and mu- 
tual jealousies prevented any one of them from gaining an 
ascendency so absolute, as to crush those vigorous germs of 
freedom which, though trampled by tyranny and cankered 
by corruption, have never ceased to live in European society, 
whence they have been transplanted to the virgin soil of 
America. We may now turn to other causes of social im- 
provement, less obtrusive but perhaps more efficient than po- 
litical institutions. 

First of these was chivalry, — that poetry of arms, which 
mitigated the barbarity of war and embellished the military 
profession with the graces of courtesy and gallantry, — of hu- 
manity to a fallen foe, of generous self-devotion in the cause 
of the weak and oppressed. It was the martial enthusiasm of 
the terrible warriors of Germany, refined by the poetry of 
the Arabs, and exalted by the great moral ideas derived 
from Christianity . To estimate its influence upon society, 
we need but reflect upon the vast interval between the bru- 
tal followers of Clovis and Hengist, and their descendants, 
the Black Prince, Chevalier Bayard, and Sir Philip Sidney. 

The solemn ceremony by which the youthful warrior of 
Germany, burning for distinction, was invested with arms, 
was the mere form into which poetry and religion afterwards 
breathed the soul of chivalry. For what but ideality and relig- 
ion combined could have substituted for the impulses of rev- 
enge, of rapacity, of ambition, of mere instinctive ferocity, — 
the romantic enthusiasm of love and devotion ; — could have 
divested war of animosity and preserved, amid the fury of 



NIGHT AND MORNING. 95 

combat and the exultation of victory, a delicate courtesy, 
scrupulous honor and romantic generosity to a vanquished 
enemy. It was the business of every true knight to surpass 
his predecessors and rivals in his approaches to that lofty 
ideal, which he found in the poems and romances of the age, 
as well as in those works which treated expressly of the du- 
ties and virtues of chivalry. He must be loyal and true; 
he must be pious modest and self-denying, — redressing the 
wrongs that come to his knowledge, and ever ready to sig- 
nalize his devotion to God and the ladies. 

War and religion may seem to some a strange combina- 
tion ; but, if Christianity cannot remove social evils, is it 
nothing to mitigate them 1 If it does not eradicate the fierce 
passions of men, is it nothing to restrain, to soothe, to divest 
strife of its atrocities ] 

If the institution of chivalry has perished, it has, like every 
thing else that springs from the profoundest depths of human 
nature, left its traces deep and broad in some peculiar char- 
acteristics that distinguish the Christian nations from the most 
polished states of antiquity. The Greeks and Romans re- 
duced captives to slavery, a conduct which, it is easy to see, 
must have greatly aggravated the ferocity and destructiveness 
of wars. The rules of chivalry made it infamous to insult or 
injure a vanquished enemy, while on the other hand no valor 
or renown could wipe out the stain which a violation of his 
word of honor brought upon the escutcheon of a Knight. 
Here we have the origin of that humane system of warfare 
peculiar to the Christian nations, which prohibits wanton 
destruction of life and property, enjoins kind treatment of 
prisoners, and sends them back to their own country upon 
their simple parol of honor. 

The chief glory of chivalry was that romantic devotion to 
the softer sex, which, though it did not prevent licentiousness, 
contributed greatly to secure to woman that position which 



96 NIGHT AND MORNING. 

she holds in modern society. This brings us by a natural 
transition to one of the most interesting topics in the philo- 
sophy of social progress. 

It is obvious that woman can exert her due influence only 
in that state of society in which, instead of being the slave of 
man's passions, she is respected and beloved — the sharer of 
his inmost thoughts — the equal companion of his joys and his 
sorrows. Such a state of society has existed only in con- 
nection with Christianity. No where else has she occupied 
a social position suited to develop the beautiful properties of 
her nature, and at the same time preserve that moral purity 
which can alone enable those properties to exert a salutary 
influence over the other sex. Nowhere else has opinion 
girded her with invisible armor more potent than steel, more 
impervious than adamant. 

The Spartans and Romans respected their women, but it 
was the kind of respect that a tiger has for his mate. The 
Spartan mother could buckle on the armor of her son, and 
bid him return with his shield or upon it, for she, when young, 
had been compelled by the laws of Lycurgus to wrestle 
naked in the presence of the young men. She was exclud- 
ed from the tables and social meetings of the other sex, and 
even separated from her own children, who at an early age 
were placed under the care of persons employed by the state. 
The respect of the martial Romans for the sex was perfect- 
ly consistent with an almost total neglect of their society, for 
these terrible warriors, whose home was the camp or the 
field, had very little relish for the soft endearments of domes- 
tic life, or the refined pleasures of cultivated society. Cato's 
singular condescension to his friend Hortensius must consid- 
erably qualify our admiration of Roman manners in this 
respect. The Germans in their forests respected their wo- 
men, but the nature of that regard may be judged of by the 
fact, that in their warlike expeditions they were accompanied 



NIGHT AND MORNING. 97 

by their wives and sisters, who sometimes fought by their 
sides and emulated the hardihood and ferocity of their hus- 
bands and brothers. It must be further remarked that what 
Tacitus tells us of German manners, is inconsistent with the 
known licentiousness of the Saxon invaders of England. I 
need scarcely allude to the slavery of women among the Mo- 
hammedans. It is true that the Arab poetry was full of love, 
but the sentiment, though often tender, was exaggerated and 
sensual. The beauty immured in the harem was, as M. Sis- 
mondi remarks, a deity as well as a slave, but she was never 
a woman, the virtuous helpmate of man. 

It is worth while to inquire into the causes of the superior- 
ity of the Christian nations in this respect. M. Guizot has 
endeavored to account for it by the peculiar circumstances 
of the feudal family. The baron living remote from cities 
in his lonely castle among rocks and forests, surrounded 
by humbl® retainers with whom he could have but little in- 
tercourse, gave those hours not spent in war and the chase 
to the society of his wife and children. Moreover, he thinks 
that the only persons to whom the baron could confide his 
secrets, or whom he would permit to counsel with him, were 
his wife and the parish priest, and that the chieftain of course 
set great value upon those two indispensable personages. 
This may go for pi^ecisely what it is worth ; very little more 
I apprehend, than M. Guizot's notions of a balance of power 
in America. 

On the other hand, M. Sismondi is of opinion that the ex- 
alted position of woman in western society should be ascrib- 
ed to the oriental poetry introduced into Spain by the 
Mohammedan conquests. Doubtless we may trace to that 
source much of the refined voluptuousness of the troubadours 
and the romantic extravagance of Spanish chivalry. But if 
a kindred poetical enthusiasm, which has contributed to make 
woman in all Christian nations the cherished companion of 
9 



98 NIGHT AND MORNING. 

man and the ornament of the social circle, has in all Moham- 
medan countries, made her the secluded slave of the most 
heartless sensuality, surely some potent and universal agency 
must have been at work to produce so wide a divergence. — 
That agency was the unobtrusive influence of the Christian 
religion, partly direct, partly through the medium of chivalry. 

Woman has ever been the ally of Christianity, and her 
services in its cause have been richly repaid by religion, 
which proposes to tame the fierce passions of men, by incul- 
cating precisely those virtues that find their most congenial 
soil in the female heart. Christianity has enjoined humility, 
patience, gentleness, sensibility to the joys and sorrows of 
our fellow creatures, as constituting the very ideal of moral 
beauty. It gives its divine sanction to qualities which were 
held in contempt by the most cultivated nations of antiquity, 
who respected only the sterner virtues of justice, temperance, 
fortitude and patriotism. It is obvious that a religion, which 
exalts those virtues most congenial with the nature and con- 
dition of woman to the first rank of moral attainments, must 
elevate her in the social scale. While Christianity by 
adorning woman with its own peculiar graces, rendered her 
more truly worthy of the love and homage of the other sex, 
it also taught the fierce warriors of those times to respect 
qualities the most opposite to their own. Indeed what was 
chivalry itself but a constant effort to mitigate the horrors of 
war, and embellish the profession of arms by as large an 
admixture of those very qualities as was compatible with the 
requisite courage and energy. We need not therefore be sur- 
prised, that haughty valor himself came and bowed at the 
feet of beauty, and sought in the smile of gentle loveliness 
the chief reward of his perils and the inspiration of his ro- 
mantic heroism. 

The remarks in our former discourse in relation to the 
unqbtrusiveness of the greatest and most durable power ? 



NIGHT AND MORNING. 99 

apply with peculiar force to the contributions of woman to 
the progress of society. Even philosophic historians have 
been far from doing justice to female influence, because from 
the nature of the case, their attention is chiefly directed to 
the intrigues of courts, the movements of armies, the doings 
of politicians, the bubbles and commotions of the surface of 
society. But kings, heroes, statesmen, were all children 
once, and no one need be told that in the quiet shades of 
domestic life we must look for the springs of that mighty 
stream, which bears upon its troubled surface warriors and 
statesmen, courts and armies, republics and dynasties, and all 
the multiform institutions and transactions of civil society. 

What latest improvement of Algebra will enable us to 
compute how much the tears of beloved wives and sisters, 
the counsels and entreaties of Christian mothers have done 
for mankind ! During the earlier part of the middle ages, 
domestic education was doubtless the most powerful auxiliary 
to the moral influence of the clergy, and often the antidote 
to their corruptions and superstitions. Woman was gener- 
ally on the side of religion and virtue, if we may judge from 
most of the instances in which female influence rises to the 
surface of that turbulent society. The love-poetry of the 
period affords us additional evidence that the relations of the 
sexes were not only refining, but purifying in their tendency. 
The love passages which soften the stern grandeur of Dante, 
and in a still higher degree the sonnets of Petrarch, which 
fell upon the awakening mind of Europe, like sparks of 
heavenly fire, breathe a respectful tenderness and elevation 
of sentiment unknown to the amatory poetry of the ancients, 
and never dreamed of by the fiery voluptuousness of the 
Mohammedans. The Christian mistress, the Christian wife, 
the Christian mother! what a vast segment of modern civili- 
zation and social progress is defined by those words ! 

The noblest civilization tends to bring the two sexes nearer 



100 NIGHT AND MORNING. 

together in regard to their moral and intellectual character. 
The highest order of genius has been justly said to combine 
the peculiarities of both sexes ; the rigorous understanding, 
the force of imagination, the energy of will that distinguishes 
the one, with the quick perception, the intuitive tact, the ten- 
derness and sensibility of the other. There is no reason to 
hope that what is now only true of remarkable individuals 
will ever be universal or even general, yet the degree, to 
which the difference between man and woman is lessened by 
a reciprocal interchange of those qualities which we regard 
as most worthy of love and admiration in each respectively 
may be as good a measure as any other of the real progress 
of society. 

Aside from speculation, the peculiar properties of woman's 
moral and intellectual structure are precisely such as are 
adapted, whenever her social position commands respect and 
favors the development of her powers, to smoothe the asper- 
ities of man, to refine and elevate his sentiments, to entwine 
his rugged strength with the foliage and flowers of tenderness 
and fancy. There is nothing which so calls into action the 
finest feelings of his nature, as the sense of being leaned 
upon, of being looked up to as a guardian by a being so 
graceful in her timidity, so beautiful in her helplessness, pro- 
vided her virtue commands his respect ; for if she be not pure, 
if she revere not herself, she may have the protection, but 
never the sincere homage of chivalry, and the elegance which 
she diffuses over society only renders vice more attractive by 
divesting it of its grossness. 

Chivalry reached its perfection when it added to the poetry 
of love that poetry of devotion which gave origin to the cru- 
sades. Upon the subject of these holy wars, about as much 
nonsense has been written and spoken as on almost any other 
subject, whatever. What avail the endless tirades upon the 
folly and absurdity of the crusades'? Are the worship of 



NIGHT AND MORNING. 101 

gold, the enterprises of commercial extension, the lust of ter- 
ritorial aggrandizement, which now embroil nations, a whit 
more respectable that the poetical devotion which carried the 
chivalry of Europe to the sepulchre of Christ % Why suffer 
the enterprises of sordid and earth-born selfishness to pass 
with perhaps a gentle expression of disapprobation, and ex- 
haust the vocabulary of contempt upon the offspring of great 
and generous emotions. No doubt that inundation of fiery 
valor, which Europe poured upon Asia, was turbid enough 
with profligacy, seeking to expiate a life of guilt by a martial 
pilgrimage to the cradle of religion, and vague hopes of reck- 
less adventurers to repair their fortunes and gratify their 
passions in the opulent and voluptuous East. "What of all 
that ] Similar facts may be predicated of every large body 
of men that ever assembled on earth. The solemn homilies 
of conscientious and respectable persons upon the folly and 
wickedness of other people, are to the last degree wearisome 
and unprofitable. It is not in this manner that the historical 
philosopher contemplates the great movements of society. 
The crusaders were not so foolish ; the idea of founding a 
great Christian power in the East was not so chimerical; 
nor have those wars been so barren of beneficial results as 
some short-sighted persons imagine. 

The men of our age, which doubtless has follies and ab- 
surdities enough of its own, ought not to sit in judgment 
upon those of another, unless they are able to enter into 
their spirit and understand their motives. It is difficult to 
obtain a clear insight into the thoughts and feelings of those 
"fervent days of old," when religious faith, instead of being 
a moral probability floating in a medium of metaphysical ab- 
straction and patronized by politicians as an useful auxiliary 
to law in preserving social order, was a warm and life-like 
reality, glowing in the hearts and living in the daily business 
of men and affording the most powerful incentives to action. 



102 NIGHT AND MORNING. 

In modern times the poetry of devotion has been so much 
sobered by motives belonging to the present state of being, 
that it is hard to tell whether the chief sources of our pru- 
dential morality are in earth or heaven. I am aware that 
this is a necessary stage in the progress of mankind from 
ages of noble and heroic, but superstitious and persecuting 
fervor, to those of equally poetical but far more clear and tol- 
erant belief. Yet there is no reason why the self-complacent 
shrewdness of this rather barren and prosaic age of transition, 
should be particularly lavish of pity or contempt upon half- 
enlightened, but still glorious manifestations of those high 
properties of our nature, which distinguish us from the beasts 
that perish. 

The chivalric, like the heroic ages, exhibit striking contrasts 
of strong lights and deep shadows. The conduct of men 
who are guided by cool calculations of profit and loss, will 
in general have an even tenor, seldom sinking into crime, 
seldom rising into heroic virtue. But ages of faith, which 
are also ages of fervent and overmastering impulses, are pro- 
ductive of splendid virtues and dreadful crimes, and show 
many examples of those powerful but irregular natures which 
are great alike in their evil and their good. In partially civil- 
ized societies, like those of the middle ages, where the restraints 
of law and public opinion are feeble, and the elements of a vast 
and glorious national existence are yet lying, as it were, in 
chaos, it need not surprise us that characters in general 
marked by piety, generosity and heroism, are sometimes dark- 
ened by fearful outbursts of an opposite character, followed 
by a depth of remorse to which more disciplined minds are 
utter strangers. In such times the mixture of good and evil 
in human nature; the polarity of powerful passions, is much 
more freely and strikingly manifested, than in a state of soci- 
ety, where each man's path is marked out and hedged in for 
him by education, custom and public opinion. 



NIGHT AND MORNING. 103 

The crusades were a universal sifting and shaking up of 
the chaotic elements of society. To contemporaries they 
may have appeared as the French revolution did to persons 
now living, an aimless tempest of human passions. In such 
cases we observe nothing at first but the eddying of hosts, the 
shock of arms, the clouds of dust and garments rolled in 
blood. But when the uproar has ceased and the clouds have 
rolled away, a new world is disclosed, and we find that many 
time-honored abuses, old institutions and inveterate prejudices 
have passed away forever. 

Thus the Europe, which saw with indifference the kingdom 
of Jerusalem, watered with so much blood, return under the 
yoke of the Moslems, was very different from that Europe, 
which had burst into a flame at the preaching of Peter the 
Hermit. Brought in contact with Asiatic civilization — with 
strange and striking manners — with the remnant of Roman 
majesty that still lingered on the shores of the Bosphorus, 
a sad memento of ancient glory — with more refined and lux- 
urious modes of living than those to which they had been 
accustomed, the ideas of the rude warriors of the west were 
enlarged. A profitable commerce began to diffuse the com- 
modities and the arts of the east over the western world. Social 
order had gained by the passing away of many turbulent and 
reckless spirits. The barons had sold their estates to raise 
money for those romantic expeditions, and by that means as 
well by their prolonged absence, the royal authority gained 
ground at the expense of the feudal system. The loose 
confederacies of petty principalities, which had little more 
of national existence than the name, began to consolidate 
into compact and powerful states. The monarchs with aug- 
menting authority and revenues increasing with the increase 
of commercial wealth, began to employ mercenary troops 
and dispense with the short and precarious services of their 



104 NIGHT AND MORNING. 

turbulent vassals. Modern Europe, in short, emerged from 
a chaos of conflicting elements. 

As we have intimated above, the crusades gave the feudal 
system a blow from which it never recovered. From the 
termination of those wars, we find the central authority in 
France, the peculiar soil of feuds, steadily gaining ground. 
Yet the struggle between monarchy and feudalism was every 
where sufficiently protracted to keep alive, till more enlight- 
ened times, some sparks of the spirit of liberty. The idea 
of absolute power was never permitted to lay hold of and 
completely subjugate the minds of the people. During that 
struggle, each party had sought to strengthen itself by liberal 
concessions to the commons. The precious guarantees of 
freedom thus created, were too often, it is true, neglected or 
forgotten in ages of ignorance and servitude, but they were 
preserved to confound the minions of despotic power, and 
strengthen the advocates of liberty, when new life had been 
infused into them by the bold and searching spirit of modern 
inquiry. As we shall see hereafter, the popular branch of 
the English parliament owes its existence to a great baron at 
war with his king. 

Feudalism, having done its work, rapidly declined. "When 
the arm of the law became strong enough to afford protection 
to life and property, the advantages of the feudal relation 
ceased, and only its burdens remained. The old Roman 
law was incorporated with the jurisprudence of most parts of 
Europe, and though betraying its despotic origin by many 
slavish features, which were in a great measure corrected 
by the independent spirit of those who adopted it, this code 
was admirably adapted to the regulation of the domestic and 
social relations as well as to the speedy and equitable redress 
of injuries. 

But feudalism did not perish utterly, even after it had ac- 
complished the great purposes of its existence. This is true 



NIGHT AND MORNING. 105 

of all old institutions, — the body lingers long among men 
after the soul has departed. They become so closely inter- 
woven with the social system, that they cannot be suddenly 
torn away without destruction to the whole fabric. It re- 
quired the French Revolution to give the finishing blow to 
feudalism. In the latter part of the middle ages, after the 
increasing vigor of monarchy had crushed the independence 
of the feudal nobility, the latter ceased to be the champions 
of liberty and the guardians of popular rights. They be- 
came the allies of power, and sharers in the plunder and 
oppression of the industrious masses ; they began to bask in 
the sunshine of courts, and waste in debauchery and osten- 
tation the substance of the trampled multitude. But at the 
same time they became the patrons of art and letters, while 
their luxury and magnificence gave encouragement to com- 
merce and manufactures. Thus they were unwittingly rais- 
ing up two classes of men, the men of letters and the men of 
trade, who were destined at a subsequent period to over- 
throw the throne and the church, as well as the aristocracy 
which had fostered them. 

Let us now rapidly trace the improvements in commerce, 
art, literature and general knowledge. Though Italy suffer- 
ed greatly from the fury of the barbarians, she was the first to 
rise from the ruins of the empire. She had been more popul- 
ous and more thoroughly civilized than the western provinces, 
and of course reacted with more power upon her conquerors, 
whose manners soon softened in that glorious climate amid 
the astonishing remains of ancient magificence. The majesty 
of Rome still lingered about the cradle of her power and the 
scene of her glory. The eastern emperors re-asserted their 
claims from time to time, and kept the barbarians in check, 
until the new civilization had taken root under the fostering 
care of the spiritual supremacy of Rome. For the sceptre 
had not yet departed from the " eternal city." She still pre- 



106 NIGHT AND MORNING. 

sided over the destinies of mankind. The empire of force 
had given place to a moral power still more wonderful, 
which extended its guardianship of order, religion and learn- 
ing over the entire Christian world, though Italy, of course, 
being under the very shadow of the Roman tiara, enjoyed 
the largest share of its protection. 

The principal cities of Italy became the seats of a flourish- 
ing commerce, which gradually extended to every part of 
Europe within reach of their ships. They began to rival 
each other in every species of productive industry. They 
established free and democratic governments, which however 
soon fell a prey to domestic faction and foreign intrigue — 
the usual fate of those petty republics confined to a single 
city or a small district of country. A single explosion in so 
confined a space may shatter the constitution, and the weak- 
ness of such communities lays them open to foreign ambition . 
Their fate furnishes no argument against democratic institu- 
tions in a great country which can stand alone, and embrace 
such an extent of territory and variety of interests, that no 
local disease is likely to endanger its political integrity. 

The cities on the Mediterranean coasts of Spain and 
France soon rivalled those of Italy in commercial enterprise. 
To facilitate its operations, banks were established, — first, it 
seems, at Barcelona ; for the monied corporations of Italy 
did not for some time after their creation perform the ordin- 
ary functions of banking institutions, being limited to aiding 
the fiscal department of government. All banks were at 
first confined to deposit and exchange, — the functions of dis- 
count and circulation having been added in comparatively 
recent times. 

Commercial prosperity was the pioneer of art, literature 
and scientific discovery. Before proceeding further I will 
remark, though it is scarcely necessary to do so, that we may 
speak of the same thing as being at once an effect and a cause 



NIGHT AND MORNING. 107 

of the progress of society, without confusion of ideas or terms. 
The arrangements of the All-Wise have established a system 
of mutual action and re-action, so that when a product has 
been evolved from the fermentation of elements, it immedi- 
ately becomes a constituent of new combinations. 

In the infancy of modern civilization, poetry was as usual 
the first voice of awakening mind. Poetry precedes science, 
because the natural course of intellectual culture is from the 
particular to the general — from the concrete to the abstract. 
All the various forms of poetry spring from the same proper- 
ties of our intellectual structure. Its essence is a passionate 
recognition of the sublime and beautiful, arising from an in- 
tuitive perception of the correspondence between ideas and 
qualities and their outward manifestations in form, color and 
proportion. That even a building may embody an idea 
which will shadow forth the moral feelings of men, must be 
evident, if we compare the voluptuous gracefulness of an ori- 
ental mosque with the religious twilight, the massive propor- 
tions, the gorgeous yet gloomy magnificence of a Gothic 
cathedral. The aspiring spirit of the Papacy, which, in the 
name of Heaven, acquired and maintained an absolute do- 
minion over the minds of men, stands forever embodied in 
the marble of St. Peter's, — in those arches springing up to 
the clouds, — in those gigantic columns, fit to prop the dome 
which the stupendous audacity of a Michael Angelo suspend- 
ed in mid-heaven. The spirit of the middle ages stands 
more legibly written in the cathedrals, abbeys and castles, 
which have survived the ravages of time, than in any of the 
confused chronicles of that period. 

Science is analytic — Poetry, synthetic. Science takes to 
pieces to examine in detail. Poetry puts together the var- 
ious parts of a beautiful and harmonious whole. Science 
imitates the destructive — poetry the constructive processes 
of nature ; but in so doing she surpasses nature. It is true 



108 NIGHT AND MORNING. 

that all the parts of artistic creations are found in the actual 
world ; yet the painter, the sculptor or the literary artist bodies 
forth forms or characters superior to anything which Nature 
can show. No human form ever equalled the master-pieces 
of sculpture ; no such combination of profound intellect, fear- 
ful energy of will, and consistent depravity, as Milton's Satan, 
ever was known on earth ; and no human pair could have 
furnished the same poet with an exact likeness of our first 
parents in Paradise. It is manifest that the type of the spe- 
cific beauty or grandeur of the object must exist in the mind 
of the artist, and this type I call the idea of the object. The 
same idea must exist in the mind of the beholder or the 
reader, though dim and perhaps invisible to his conscious- 
ness, until genius makes him acquainted with his own 
thoughts. 

Essentially connected with the strange sense of keeping, 
or correspondence, between ideas and qualities, which I have 
alluded to above, is the tendency to comprehend the whole at 
once, in other words, to consider the parts in their just and 
proportionate adaptation to the purposes of each combina- 
tion, which I regard as a chief characteristic of poetry. And 
if poetry often stirs the depths of our being by bold relief or 
vivid colors, that seem to mar the harmony of her creations, 
we must recollect that every specific whole with which we 
are acquainted, is a part of a still larger whole, its relations 
with which cannot be all exhibited at once. Thus the indi- 
vidual man, though complete in himself, is a part of a politi- 
cal organization, and has, to whatever represents the unity of 
the state, relations which may give rise to powerful emotions, 
such as patriotism and loyalty. But further, he is part of a uni- 
verse, and has relations to God and Eternity. If he be destined 
to a boundless and everlasting existence hereafter, the poeti- 
cal tendency towards the whole may mar the harmony of his 
being viewed solely in relation to the purposes of the present 



NIGHT AND MORNING. 109 

world ; for those mighty emotions, in which poetry revels, 
seem to cold philosophy a strange waste of spiritual power, 
as they are utterly disproportioned in their depth and intens- 
ity to the real magnitude of the objects which call them 
forth. Every deep feeling, every great idea claims kindred 
with infinity. Love passes beyond the grave and asks an 
eternal life for its object. If the poetry of a young soul 
once clusters around the form of some maiden, not a whit 
more beautiful or charming than thousands of her sex whom 
he passes with indifference, the sunshine of heaven beams in 
her smile, while her frown is the shadow of that cloud which 
hovers over the bottomless Tophet. It is no objection, but 
rather a confirmation of this theory, that the dreamy despond- 
ency of scepticism sometimes takes a highly poetical form ; 
for without that dim unconscious struggling towards infinity, 
to which no human heart is an utter stranger, such despond- 
ency could not possibly exist. 

It is not therefore surprising that the poetry of the chival- 
ric, like that of the heroic ages, was vitally connected with 
religion. I speak not alone of such works as that of Dante, 
in which religious ideas are clearly predominant. The Chris- 
tian religion breathed its own immortal life into all the art 
and literature of the middle ages, which has left any deep traces 
in the history of the human mind. The forms may have 
been classic, but the spirit was derived from Christianity. 

Language, though not the only medium of spiritual inter- 
course, is by far the most important one. In general the 
progress of language and that of intellect are so nearly con- 
current, that the one may be taken as the measure of the 
other. Lan^uao'e nas been called the vesture of thouGfht; it 
might more properly be called the body, of which thought is 
the soul. They grow together and exercise a reciprocal in- 
fluence. If we closely watch the processes of our own minds, 
we shall find that we think in words; indeed we cannot car- 



110 NIGHT AND MORNING. 

ry on a train of thought without them. We often hear it 
said that such a man has good ideas, but has not words to ex- 
press them. May we not reverse the statement, and say that 
man does not think clearly on any given subject, because he 
has not words to fix the fugitive thought in the memory until 
the whole matter has passed under review. Poverty of lan- 
guage is usually connected with poverty of intellect, and the 
connection is such that it is difficult to say, in any given case, 
which is the cause, and which the effect. To enrich the lan- 
guage of men is to enlarge their range of ideas. 

Very few words will suffice for the desires and conceptions 
of ignorant barbarians. But as men advance in knowledge 
and refinement, new terms must be found for philosophical 
abstractions, for nice shades of discrimination, for the end- 
less variety of new objects and principles, which are perpet- 
ually disclosed by a widening range of intellectual excur- 
sions. It is obvious that if men are compelled to invent the 
terms necessary for these purposes, it must be long before 
the first of those arbitrary signs of ideas would be sanction- 
ed by usage so as to convey a generally recognized mean- 
ing. The progress of knowledge under such circumstances 
must be extremely slow. The difficulty of grafting the ex- 
pressions of new ideas upon the meagre dialect of barbar- 
ians, would of course diminish with the progress of the lan- 
guage, as every word agreed upon, and brought into gen- 
eral use would facilitate the adoption of new coinages, yet it 
would greatly retard, if it did not prove an insurmountable 
obstacle to intellectual improvement. 

Happily modern literature was under no necessity of in- 
venting a language. The Romans had imposed not only 
their laws, but their language upon the conquered provinces. 
Every where the Latin became the language of civil and 
ecclesiastical proceedings, of learned men, and of the most 
cultivated classes of society. The vernacular of Italy, in 



NIGHT AND MORNING. Ill 

those parts of Gaul nearest to Italy, it almost entirely sup- 
planted the native dialects. After the ancient writings had 
found shelter in the monasteries from the ravages of the north- 
ern invaders, there was no longer at hand the means of preserv- 
ing the purity of the language, by correcting the errors of pro- 
vincial pronunciation. From the absence of a common stan- 
dard, the words came at length to be written as they were 
pronounced in each country respectively, and thus the Latin 
was more or less corrupted even in Italy. But with all its 
corruptions, here was a language fit for the purposes of liter- 
ature and philosophy, ready to be engrafted upon the rude 
dialects of the German and Gothic conquerors. From these 
two sources have sprung the most copious and beautiful of 
the modern languages. Of these, the Italian and the Lange 
D'Oc spoken in those parts of France nearest to Italy, had 
the least admixture of German idioms. They rapidly im- 
proved; for being originally best suited to the purposes of 
awakening mind, they received the first contributions from the 
reviving literature of modern Europe, — a literature which 
combined the spirit of classic antiquity and the refined sen- 
sualism of oriental poetry, borrowed from the Arabian con- 
querors of Spain, with the mighty passions and gigantic but 
gloomy conceptions nurtured in the mysterious depths of 
the German forests, the moral ideas of Christianity and the 
romantic enthusiasm of chivalry. 

In accordance with what I have said above of the mutual 
relations and concurrent progress of language and intellect, 
we find that Italy, and those parts of France in which the 
Lange D' Oc was spoken, became the seats of the first great 
revival of letters. England, Germany and the north of 
France had scarcely begun to emerge from the long night of 
ignorance, when Dante embodied in his great poem the su- 
perstitions, the moral feelings and the poetical passions of 
his age and country ; when the Troubadours were singing 



112 NIGHT AND MORNING. 

in bower and hall their lays of love ; when Petrarch, the 
morning star of modern literature, made his triumphal pro- 
gress through Italy, to be crowned on the Capitoline hill with 
a chaplet more glorious than had ever decorated the brow 
of any of those mighty warriors, who had climbed the same 
steep followed by captive monarchs and the spoils of nations. 

The English, which, though largely indebted to the Latin, 
has never, I believe, been classed among the Romance lan- 
guages, was, during the middle ages, with the single excep- 
tion of the native German, the rudest of all the dialects of 
the western nations. Yet for it has been reserved a destiny 
far more glorious than for any of the others. It is the lan- 
guage of the greatest dramatist, the greatest epic poet, the 
greatest philosopher, the greatest mathematician, the great- 
est constitutional monarchy and the greatest republic that 
the world ever saw. It is rapidly spreading over the globe, 
and seems destined to redeem, in a great measure, the con- 
fusion of Babel. In less than a century the literature of the 
English language may reach without translation nearly one- 
half of the human family. What an immense rent does this 
fact make in the mysterious veil of futurity! 

After the revival of literature had thoroughly awakened 
the intellect of the modern world, and stimulated every spe- 
cies of inquiry, the first draughts from the unsealed fountains 
of knowledge seemed to produce a kind of intoxication. In 
all ages the love of knowledge is an unquenchable passion 
of the human soul, destined perhaps to survive all other pas- 
sions. But nothing in recent times can help us to form a 
conception of the ardent spirit of discipleship, the enthusias- 
tic reverence for wisdom and learning, which, after the revi- 
val of letters and the establishment of the universities, drew 
around the celebrated teachers throngs of eager and devoted 
students. Thousands nocked from every part of Europe in 
the thirteenth century to hear the new lectures on the Roman 



NIGHT AND MORNING. 113 

law in the university of Bologna, and the knowledge acquir- 
ed there contributed greatly to the improvement of jurispru- 
dence in their respective countries. When Abelard, who is 
regarded by some, and perhaps justly, as the first in point of 
time, of the great original thinkers of modern Europe, retired 
from the university of Paris to a remote solitude, thousands 
would not be hindered from following him, and the savage 
wilderness that surrounded the monastery of the Paraclete, 
became an academic grove. In the fourteenth century there 
were no less than thirty thousand students at the university 
of Oxford. 

Some modern lights of the world have thought proper to 
sneer at the literary enthusiasm of those times, because, in 
'their opinion, the pursuits of this multitude of students were 
unprofitable. Of the scholastic philosophy especially, which, 
in the absence of a correct knowledge of the limits of scien- 
tific research, furnished the chief occupation of the newly 
awakened intellect of the modern world, much has been 
written, as it seems to me, with very little judgment or dis- 
crimination. It is the natural order of things, that the era of 
'enlightened inductions should have been preceded by endless 
discussions of those deep questions, which regard the nature 
of man and the purposes of his being, his relations to the 
supernal powers, the freedom of the will and the origin of 
'evil, which, as they admit of no satisfactory solution in the 
present state of being, must return upon each successive 
generation in all their original perplexity. An undying in- 
terest in those deep matters, chastened by an experimental 
acquaintance with the limits of human knowledge in the 
present state of being, lies at the bottom of every philosophic 
mind. If some of the questions of the schoolmen appear to 
us very puerile, we must recollect that the human mind had 
but fairly waked up from the slumber of ages. 

Of what use, it may be asked, are inquiries that can yield 
10 



114 NIGHT AND MORNING. 

no certain results 1 The question betrays very narrow views 
of the objects of intellectual culture. Science has made 
many contributions to wealth, comfort and luxury, but after 
all, the utility of knowledge, using the term in the sense of 
conduciveness to the physical well-being of man, should not 
cause us to lose sight of the development of the mental and 
moral faculties themselves. An expansive mind will despise 
no species of research, which lifts the soul above the paltry 
concerns and debasing perturbations of earth-born selfish- 
ness, and sends it abroad into wide and lofty regions, where, 
notwithstanding it may gather no fruits that can be either 
counted or weighed, its powers are exercised in wrestling 
with those mysteries of being, which people the shadowy 
realms of metaphysical speculation. The scholastic philoso- 
phy was a sort of intellectual gymnastics, which, in the child- 
hood of science, might accustom the mind to the exercise of 
its own powers, and thus prepare the way for the inductive 
system of Bacon, who, with all his broad candor, was proba- 
bly not fully aware of the extent of his obligations to those 
very men whose authority he demolished forever. The half- 
enlightened labors of one age become b. part of the culture 
of the next ; the thoughts of each sect or party unconsciously 
blend with the mental processes of their opponents. Were 
disputants aware how much they owe their antagonists, dis- 
cussion, instead of paying mutual debts with mutual abuse, 
would be a friendly and sympathetic emulation in the search 
after truth. 

I have said that the labors of the schoolmen prepared the 
way for the inductive philosophy. The young mind, in the 
first overflowing activity of its new-found faculties, questions 
everything in heaven and earth, but soon finds that he is per- 
plexing himself with inquiries, that lie without the limit3 of 
human knowledge in the present state of being, and finally 
sits down to the humble but more productive business of in- 



NIGHT AND MORNING. 115 

duction. But in the meantime he has prepared himself for 
this task by close thinking and keen discrimination. 

A mind, not already accustomed to subtle analysis, to deal- 
ing with general principles, is not likely to institute a series 
of observations, or to conduct them in such a manner as to 
make any important discoveries. Phenomena pass unheeded 
before the eyes of the uncultivated, which afford to the phi- 
losopher ample scope for his disciplined powers of research. 
We often hear it said that most discoveries have been due to 
accident, but the same accident may have happened a thou- 
sand times without producing any such result, because the 
right sort of mind was not present to improve it. Millions 
of apples had fallen, before that trivial circumstance became 
to the disciplined mind of a Newton, the first link of a chain 
which encircled the universe. The labors of a forgotten 
multitude of assiduous inquirers had contributed to form that 
stupendous intellect, which could deduce, from the common- 
est facts, the general laws of Nature. The ever-rising surges 
of the mysterious tide of spiritual force, of which the scholas- 
tic philosophy had been one of the greatest tributaries, had 
borne him to a point, from which his eye could sweep the 
empire of the Almighty. 

We must not suppose that intellectual activity during the 
latter portion of the middle ages, was restricted to metaphyseal 
speculation and the classic study of antiquity. When once the 
human mind has been thoroughly awakened to a conscious- 
ness of its own powers, it cannot be confined to any prescrib- 
ed channel. While the schoolmen were discussing their 
nominalism and realism, and the new study of the Greek 
literature was dividing the universities into Greeks and Tro- 
jans, who fought their wordy battles with almost as much 
animosity, as the heroes of the Iliad had shown in more dead- 
ly encounters, there were not wanting bold original thinkers, 
who turned their attention to more productive investigations. 



116 NIGHT AND MORNING. 

The fifteenth century was signalized by many great discove- 
ries and inventions. There were men of genius who prac- 
tised those principles of induction, which Lord Bacon, who 
may be called the Blackstone of the laws of research, after- 
wards digested into a beautiful system. 

The scholastic philosophy prepared the way for the refor- 
mation. It is true that even the boldest of the schoolmen, 
by a dexterous use of terms, contrived to keep within the pale 
of orthodoxy, yet anything which sets men to thinking is 
dangerous to established abuses. He who puts the minds of 
others upon a new track, must not expect them to stop pre- 
cisely where he does. He has applied a spark to an infinitely 
expansive power, and he cannot confine it within the same 
limits that he choses to impose upon himself. Nor was the 
church by any means so hostile to investigation as many have 
supposed. It was not until the success of the great revolt had 
shown the Pope and his clergy how the spirit of inquiry endan- 
gered their own power, that they began to discourage it. In the 
careless confidence of undisputed supremacy, they connived 
at a freedom and boldness, which they afterwards learned to 
dread as their most formidable foes. 

The lono: twilight of intellect had melted into morn, and 
the glorious sun of modern illumination was gilding the 
mountain tops, when Luther sounded his bugle in the forests 
of Germany, to give notice of a grand bishop hunt, and from 
hill and valley, from city and hamlet, a stalwart army sprang 
up at the inspiring summons, for which they had long been 
waiting, and the champions of the church woke up from the 
lethargy that had well nigh been fatal, and marshalled their 
Jesuit host, and that world-battle commenced, which must go 
on until authority and freedom shall have fixed their respec- 
tive limits and once more embraced each other. This mighty 
struggle demands a separate discourse altogether to itself. 

In this brief sketch of the progress of society during the 



NIGHT AND MORNING. 117 

middle ages, I have nowhere attempted to fix the era of the 
beginning of improvement, for the best of all reasons, that it 
is utterly impossible to do so. As well might we attempt to 
define the boundary between light and darkness. We may 
say here is light and there is darkness, but between the two 
points which we select, there is a neutral ground, where they 
contend for existence. The principles of moral life at work 
in the heart of society, require long periods to show any 
distinct results upon the surface, and though, if we compare 
two ages widely separated, we perceive that immense changes 
have taken place, the intermediate points of transition 
may be absolutely imperceptible. 

The student of history cannot fail to observe upon what a 
sublime scale, both as to time and the number of agents em- 
ployed, the plans of Providence are conducted. In that 
mighty warfare with ignorance, sin and misery, which makes 
up the history of our race, a thousand years are as one day. 
Ages on ages roll away, and millions on millions fall in the 
breach to achieve a single conquest from the dark domains of 
the enemy of mankind. The net product of the labors of 
many of the greatest intellects of the race, toiling in poverty, 
neglect and misery, may be mastered by a child in a few 
hours. 

It is true of society as well as of the individual, that man 
is ever in pursuit of an ideal which is ever flying before him. 
His lot upon earth is an unceasing warfare with those strange 
elements of physical and moral evil, which not only lie in 
ambush on every side, but have taken up their quarters in 
his own mortal frame ; or a weary chase of the coy goddess 
Truth, whose celestial beauty shines into the heart of her 
votary, and gives him, amid the general gloom and restless- 
ness of his mortal pilgrimage, some moments of deep joy 
and transporting anticipation, but whose form forever eludes 
his eager embrace. The whole progress of society is the 



118 NIGHT AND MORNING. 

perpetual pursuit of what perhaps can never be reached in 
the present state of being. 

The tender germ, which in summer is to expand into a 
beautiful flower, and in autumn mature into a wholesome 
fruit, is at first wrapped up in fold after fold, the outermost of 
which is roughest and most capable of withstanding the 
storms of early spring. As the germ and its inner coats ex- 
pand, one wrappage after another bursts open and falls off 
when its purposes have been completed. 

This process of nature may furnish us with an illustration 
of the progress of modern society. The world-shadowing 
tree of Roman civilization was rudely torn and riven by the 
northern tempest. But its roots deeply interlaced the soil, 
and ere long, cherished by the genial warmth of religion, they 
began to sprout again and grow up into strong and hardy 
plants, and the germs of the new refinement were protected 
from the storms of those early ages, by a variety of institu- 
tions evolved by the successive stages of social development. 
The rough outer rind of the feudal system and the inner 
coats of monarchy, chartered franchises and papal supremacy 
grew together, and through them all protruded the hardy but 
beautiful flower of chivalry, which, when it decayed, was 
found to have enclosed the delicate bloom of honor, courtesy 
and social refinement. When their purposes had been ac- 
complished, so far as we can see, feudality, hereditary mon- 
archy and the papal power not only clung to the parent stem, 
but grown rigid by time, began to bruise and check the growth 
of that, which they were designed to protect, until they were 
burst open by the great revolutions to which we must now 
turn our attention. The first breach was made in the papal 
authority which pressed most directly upon expanding mind. 



III. 

SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM 



AND THE 



REFORMATION. 



SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM 

AND THE 

REFORMATION. 



It may be thought by some that I have ascribed to Christ- 
ianity too large a share in modern civilization. So far from 
this being true, I doubt whether we can do more than ap- 
proach a just conception of the stupendous importance of 
that agency. The intangible nature of its moral power must 
forever cause the actual sphere of its operations to elude the 
grasp of our faculties. It works silently in the great deep 
of spiritual being, and only by its effects can its power be 
known. And those effects may sometimes be so modified by 
other causes, as to give some show of reason for excluding 
Christianity altogether. Yet I am satisfied, that if we knew 
all, which the hopes and fears of religion have done to origin- 
ate or strengthen good resolutions, to confirm the wavering, 
to tame the ferocity and restrain the passions of men ; could 
we unveil the secrets of the millions of hearts, which have 
been exalted and purified by the moral ideal delineated in the 
gospel history ; could we, in short, follow the impalpable 
power of religion through all the generations that have 
lived and died since the first promulgation of Christianity, 
our minds would be overwhelmed by the import and majesty 
of an historical fact, in comparison with which all other facts 
are insignificant. 

It would help us to form a just conception of the import- 
ance of religion as an element of social organization, if we 
could find in all history a single example of a society, in 
11 



122 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM AND 

which all ideas of God and of future retribution had been 
thoroughly eradicated from the minds of men. A theory 
of morality, founded exclusively on considerations drawn 
from the present state of existence, has never been fairly 
tested, and we are therefore reduced to the necessity of in- 
quiring not what have been, but what would probably be its 
effects. 

This fact of itself would seem to be a sufficient proof of 
the necessity of religion. Societies, as well as individuals, 
have a strange instinct of self-preservation, and know pretty 
well what is necessary for that purpose. The common sense 
of mankind, after all, is a much surer guide than eccentric 
philosophers are willing to admit. The fate of all systems 
that have warred with that common sense, from the follies of 
the Anabaptists to the socialism of Owen, shows the impo- 
tence of the human mind, when, not content with guiding or 
regulating the social tendencies, it strikes at the vital princi- 
ples of the social organization. 

Though we may rest contented with the irreversible ver- 
dict, which history and the common sense of mankind have 
pronounced in favor of religion, the philosophical grounds of 
that verdict are an interesting subject of inquiry. An import- 
ant part of the business of philosophy is to find reason for 
believing what the mass believe without reason. The popu- 
lar opinions, narrow and disjointed as they are in the com- 
mon mind, appear to the philosopher under new aspects, 
lead him into wide provinces of thought, and by means of 
the relations which he alone can discern, coalesce into a 
beautiful and harmonious system, worthy of the Author of 
all truth. 

Let us first take a purely practical view of this subject, 
Tell a man of strong passions, and without strong passions 
no individual and no people can be good for much, that if he 
denies himself some present gratification, the sum of his hap- 



THE REFORMATION. 123 

piness may be ultimately greater, having regard to the 
present existence alone. He has a very short and we think 
a conclusive answer to all such reasoning. He looks round 
him and sees men who have taken the moralist's advice, suf- 
fering from all the ills that flesh is heir to, and sinking per- 
haps into an untimely grave, while the sensualist, who econ- 
omises his resources of vicious enjoyment with any degree 
of prudence, lives in a perpetual sunshine of sound digestion 
and buoyant animal spirits. He sees that what is called hap- 
piness, if there be no hereafter, depends much less upon the 
state of the conscience than the state of the stomach, and that 
justice and goodness have much less to do with success in 
this world than energy and sagacity, much less than even 
vulgar skill in driving bargains. It is useless to disguise the 
fact that the worldly prosperity of men is not in proportion 
to their virtue, but is chiefly to be ascribed to shrewdness 
and good fortune. Under these circumstances, your hopeful 
pupil concludes that a bird in hand is worth two in the bush, 
and declines to forego present enjoyment for the sake of 
some future and doubtful advantage. 

As to virtue being its own reward, we should reflect that 
the better a man becomes, the worse he seems to himself, 
because the very process of purification sharpens the moral 
sensibilities. Whenever one feels particularly complacent in 
the contemplation of his own goodness, he may be very sure 
that he is not only making no progress in virtue, but is very 
decidedly on the downward road. It was the greatest moral 
hero that ever lived who exclaimed in the bitterness of his 
soul, "Oh! wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me 
from the body of this death]" 

The moralist may next appeal to his pupil's generous sen- 
timents, and exhort him to sacrifice his own gratification to 
the general good. But no one who knows human nature, 
would expect in this way to produce any effect upon the 



124 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM AND 

mass of mankind. They are selfish beings, and their own 
interest must be made to coincide with that of society. — 
Your argument that the observance of those laws which con- 
duce to the general welfare, may increase the share of each 
in the aggregate of social happiness, is altogether too circu- 
itous to afford a motive strong enough to resist the impulse 
of a present passion. Besides, your argument moves in too 
elevated a region for the creature of a day, a mere compound 
of albumen, lime, phosphorus, and other material ele- 
ments, whose existence must terminate with the dissolution 
of those elements. Talk of heroic virtue, of self-denial to a 
creature, who has nothing to hope or fear after his Utile life 
on earth has been snuffed out ! He would laugh at your 
fine spun casuistry and endless speculations about the 
general good, and seek his own good by wringing fvom his 
fleeting and worthless existence every drop of nectar which 
it could afford. His fierce passions are craving the delicious 
fruit that is almost within his grasp, when the moralist comes 
and tells him to deny himself and pursue his real good through 
a narrow, stony and circuitous path, which, for all he knows, 
may lead him into swamps and deserts, instead of those gar- 
dens of pleasure which were promised him. Why should a 
creature who must perish like the beast, care about society 
and posterity, or forego a present gratification at the bidding 
of justice, truth or principle % No human institutions could 
preserve society from utter extinction, unless fortified by a 
sense of duty founded upon the law of God, and enforced by 
the sanctions of a future life. 

There is another view of the subject which we may notice. 
One's aspirations and attainments are usually on a level with 
his views of his own nature and destiny. He who is thor- 
oughly persuaded that he is a mere compound of material 
elements, destined to return in a short time to its original 
nothingness, is not likely to strive after any higher objects, 



THE REFORMATION. 125 

than those which minister to the wants of his animal nature. 
All great thoughts and lofty aspirations claim kindred with 
infinity. 

A Newton could be happy in picking up shells on the 
shore of the ocean of truth, because he believed that one day 
he should launch into the great deep itself, and spend an eter- 
nity in exploring its mighty secrets. The sage who spends 
a lifetime in the pursuit of knowledge, can only hope to pass 
the threshold of the star paved temple of immensity, where 
the mysteries of being dwell in the shadowy recesses of 
boundless halls and endless corridors. Convince him that 
when his eyes should close in death, they would open no 
more upon this wondrous universe, and the ghastly thought 
would quench forever his lofty aspirations, for who would 
give the sap of his existence to feed those lights of mind 
which mus tgo out in everlasting night ] If it be said that some 
who have professed this dismal creed have been ardent in the 
pursuit of knowledge, I answer that so deeply is the common 
belief implanted in the human soul, that some fibres of it will 
survive the most assiduous weeding of sceptical philosophy. 
Men often unconsciously act upon principles, which in theory 
they discard. How much of their zeal is due to the love of 
truth, and how much to selfish motives, it is impossible to deter- 
mine. It must not be forgotten that the Atheist philosophers 
lived in times, when knowledge had become reputable, and a 
source of wealth and rank in society. The martyrs of 
science, who, in poverty and neglect or persecution, conquer- 
ed from the realms of darkness those fair provinces where a 
Diderot and D'Alembert dwelt in gentlemanly ease and 
safety, were all Christians or at least believers. 

Take away the hope of immortality, and this life is indeed, 
in comparison with the capacities of man, a poor and paltry 
concern, only worthy of that light mockery, which is so fatal 
to all great and generous emotions. While the coarse would 



126 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM AND 

plunge into gross sensuality, the more refined voluptuary 
would seek to disguise the littleness of his worthless existence 
with graceful and elegant pleasures ; but it would be vain to 
expect of him any noble enthusiasm for truth and virtue, not 
to speak of those lofty exhibitions of moral heroism, which 
have sometimes saved a nation or the race, and shed a never- 
dying glory over ages of belief. Like Voltaire, believing 
himself to have been created in sport, he makes up his mind 
to carry on the joke and join in the laughter, that the super- 
nal powers may not have all the fun to themselves, while he 
admits none of those emotions which can only disturb his 
epicurean serenity. 

Let us suppose that in some great moment, there flashes 
ujdoii him with resistless force the soul-stirring thought that 
there is a spark of Deity within him, which, instead of per- 
ishing with the dissolution of matter, may draw from it the 
sustenance of an eternal growth ; that he is an object of in- 
terest to higher intelligences, even to the Father of the 
Universe himself ; that every thought, word or deed, is a seed 
borne down by the stream of time to fructify for weal or woe 
to all eternity ; what a vast revolution must take place in his 
feelings and purposes ! The Divine voice reverberates 
through every recess of his mysterious nature, calling up 
deep thoughts and infinite emotions. 

It may be said that natural religion is sufficient for all the 
purposes which I have endeavored to point out. How hap- 
pened it then, that in the most cultivated nations of antiquity, 
a pure system of natural religion was confined to the schools 
of the philosophers, and was absolutely powerless to correct 
the absurd superstitions and abominable vices of the multi- 
tude 1 How happened it that the empire of spiritual dark- 
ness, which had defied the assaults of philosophy, gave way 
before the humble men who planted the Cross upon the ruins 
of the Pantheon, and transferred the sovereignty of the moral 



THE REFORMATION. 127 

world from the cloudy Olympus to the bloodstained Calvary ] 
How happens it, that the most ignorant man in a Christian 
land is familiar, from childhood, with the subjects of the 
secret and profound speculations of a Thales and a Plato, 
and has a warm and vivid apprehension of their living reality, 
which those philosophers never knew 1 Why is it, in short 
that philosophy never has, and never will, supply the place 
of the Christian religion among the mass of mankind] 

The abstract essence of the Supreme Intelligence, is too 
remote, too indefinite, to affect us strongly. A substance 
which is invisible, intangible, and beyond the reach of our 
senses and our imaginations, may be recognized by the mind, 
but cannot touch the heart, except by embodying itself in mate- 
rial forms. No one can feel either love or reverence for the 
Supreme Being, without associating him with some one or 
more of his material manifestations. But if nature is the 
body of God, and the sun, the stars and all the beautiful or 
the sublime objects of the physical world, are, as it wei*e, the 
organs, by means of which he places himself in communica- 
tion with the human soul, they give us no definite informa- 
tion as to his relations to us in particular. There is a 
tendency implanted in human nature for high purposes, to 
form a still closer bond of connection with the Divinity, to 
bring Him still nearer home to our own conceptions and our 
sympathies, to seek a divine brotherhood and supernatural 
embodiment of our own existence and destinies. As good 
and evil originate in precisely the same properties of our 
nature, according to the relative degree or objects of their 
activity, Christianity laid hold of the very principle, which, 
misguided, had been the source of idolatry, and solved that 
problem which had been always too hard for philosophy, of 
reconciling the accuracy of metaphysical abstraction with the 
warm glow of human sympathy. And herein lies its power ; 
the God-man living, sorrowing, bleeding, dying, and rising 



128 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM AND 

from the dead, as the second Adam of a spiritual posterity. 
Christianity is Philosojrfiy turned into Poetry. Hence the 
Divinity of our Saviour holds the first place among the 
Christian doctrines, for without it, Christianity is not a reli- 
gion, but a philosophy just as inefficient, on a large scale, as 
any of the systems that preceded it, or have endeavored to 
supplant it. 

The enlightened sceptic will acknowledge that the striking 
and stupendous facts in the history of Christianity demand 
the profoundest consideration of the philosophic mind. It 
cannot be denied with any shadow of plausibility, that for 
good or for evil it has been the soul of modern society. It 
is the electric chain descending from above, which has con- 
nected and given efficiency to most of the secondary causes 
of social improvement. What branch of physical science 
can compare in interest and importance with the phenomena 
of this spiritual electricity as manifested in history. Even if 
we should never attain to happy freedom from doubt as to 
the Divine authority of the Christian religion, or from per- 
plexity as to some of its characteristics in its state of original 
purity, the very inquiry itself, if conducted in a proper spirit, 
cannot fail to have good effects, for earnest meditation upon 
such subjects expands and elevates the soul. This indirect 
influence of inquiry in countries where freedom of thought 
is encouraged, has been too much overlooked. It makes 
the great difference between Protestant and Catholic nations, 
and the incontestable superiority of the former. The linger- 
ing scepticism of deep and earnest natures, the dark struggle 
which goes on in many souls between cold reason and the 
faith of love, and keeps the subject perpetually before the 
mind, is better than the stolid certainty of uninquiring bigots, 
or the thoughtless acquiescence of worldly men, who, adopting 
the creed which they have been taught, never trouble them- 
selves about the matter, until frightened by the approach ol 
death. 



THE REFORMATION. 129 

The great point is the preservation in the soul of a deep 
and undying interest in the great facts of the Gospel history, 
A recognition of those facts as the foundation of hope and 
the inspiration of love, seems to have constituted the simple" 
creed of the first Christians. There is no doubt that greater 
freedom of opinion, upon speculative points, was allowed in* 
the primitive church than is now permitted by any powerful 
sect in Christendom. An increase of the spirit of dogmatism 
always marks the decay of the religion of love, and those who 
are most zealous for the symbolism, are often most careless 
about the substance of Christianity. 

I have already had occasion to intimate, that even before 
Christianity had become the state religion of Rome, the suc- 
cinct yet comprehensive creed of the first believers had been 
expanded by councils and philosophic theologians into a 
system of dogmas, while the simple form of church govern- 
ment, in which the college of presbyters was presided over 
by one of their own number, who, without any superiority 
of rank to his brethren, exercised a general supervision, 
became the nucleus of an hierarchical condition, which was 
gradually brought to correspond almost exactly with the 
order of the civil state. The bishops of the smaller cities 
gradually extended their jurisdiction over the neighboring 
districts ; over these provincial bishops rose, in like manner, 
the great sees of Alexandria and Antioch ; and finally to crown 
the regular ascent of ecclesiastical dignity, which correspond- 
ed with that of the civil authority to the bishop of Rome, 
the capital of the empire was conceded a preeminence of 
rank, rather than of real power. Thus the civil superiority 
of Rome in a church, united with the state, and modeled by 
it, became the foundation of that extraordinary power which 
made the " eternal city" the seat of a new empire, mightier 
and more enduring than that which had been overthrown by 
the northern invaders ; resting not upon force, but opinion, 



130 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM AND 

and propagated by weapons more potent than steel, though 
drawn from an invisible armory. 

It is a difficult task to trace with candor and discernment 
the steps by which the bishops of Rome ascended to that 
height of power, from which, without any military force that 
deserved the name, they controlled not only the affairs of the 
church, but the policy of nations, trampled upon the necks 
of kings, united hostile armies under the banner of the Cross, 
and turned the rage which they were about to vent upon 
each other, against the enemies of religion and the Holy See. 
It is one of the most signal triumphs of mind over physical 
force, perhaps the most remarkable, that is to be found in 
the history of mankind. 

The northern barbarians easily became accustomed to the 
pi'eeminence of the Roman See, for most of them were con- 
verted, while the departing majesty of the empire still linger- 
ed upon the temples and palaces of the "eternal city." 
While the Greeks, in a great measure, transferred their spir- 
itual as well as temporal allegiance to the new- capitol, which 
Constantine had founded upon the Bosphorus, Rome contin- 
ued to be the centre of the western church, and her pontiff, 
throned upon the venerable remains of ancient grandeur, 
strengthened their hold upon the reverence of an ignorant and 
superstitious people, exercised a general supervision in spir- 
itual matters, sounded the alarm at the approach of heresy or 
schism, and perhaps had a right to preside, in person or by 
proxy, over the councils which were held from time to time to 
settle disputed points of faith or discipline. To this extent the 
papal supremacy is just as well founded as either the metro- 
politan or diocesan episcopacy. Neither formed any part of 
the original constitution of the apostolic age, which, as I have 
said, was a model of democratic equality, and if changes 
might be lawfully made in that constitution to meet the exi- 
gencies of the times, as many and as strong arguments might 



THE REFORMATION. 131 

have been urged in favor of the supremacy of Rome, as in 
favor of any lower degrees of episcopal jurisdiction. In a 
very advanced state of society, both are equally useless; but 
it is only among an enlightened people that a very large 
share of political or religious liberty is compatible with civil 
order and moral government. If, in rude and ignorant ages, 
a very strong ecclesiastical organization was necessary to 
preserve the moral power of religion, that organization would 
have been very defective without a central authority to form 
a bond of union as well as a salutary check upon the spiritual 
despots, who lorded it over God's heritage. 

The bishops of Rome, not content with the moral weight 
which they derived from their superior dignity and the vene- 
ration of the Christian world, aspired to the absolute sov- 
ereignty in church and state. Before noticing the steps by 
which the Roman pontiffs partially succeeded in converting 
the western world into a vast theocracy, in which they were 
the vicegerents of God, I will remark, that the historical facts, 
connected with the great schism between the eastern and 
western churches, are fatal to the exclusive pretensions of the 
Latin church and its head, to apostolic succession and spirit- 
ual authority. That separation grew out of the conflicting 
claims of Rome and Constantinople. The Greeks well 
knew, that the preeminence of the Roman bishops was owing 
solely to the political preeminence of Rome during the form- 
ation of the hierarchical constitution, and they plausibly 
argued that, in a church united with the state, the spiritual 
supremacy ought to follow the political sovereignty. At the 
time of the schism, the great river of apostolic succession and 
authority just parted into two equal streams, and by what 
right the Latin branch has ever since claimed to be the whole 
river, we are at a loss to know. The western nations adher- 
ed to the patriarch of the old capitol, partly from habit and 
because it was in their midst, partly from hostility to the 



132 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM AND 

eastern empire ; and yet the Latin church to this clay claims 
the right to dictate the faith of mankind and anathematize 
the Greek church as heretical and schismatical. With equal 
justice the latter retorts the anathema, while the liberal prot- 
estant looks on with a smile. 

Let us return to the means by which the papal court par- 
tially succeeded in establishing a theocracy in the western 
nations. The first step was to break down the national and 
provincial independence of the clergy. In their efforts to do 
this, the Roman pontiffs encountered a spirited resistance. 
The struggle was similar to that between the crown and the 
feudal barons, and in both cases the central authority tri- 
umphed, partly by the unity of its counsels and the concentra- 
tion of its energies, partly by a concurrence of fortunate circum- 
stances. In the fermentation of conflicting elements that mark- 
ed the incipient stage of civil and ecclesiastical organization, 
the limits of power were undefined and fluctuating; encroach- 
ments were easily converted into precedents. From such 
struggles the power which is lodged in a single person is al- 
most sure to come out victorious. 

It became a custom with such of the clergy as had either 
real or imaginary grievances to complain of from their imme- 
diate superiors or from the national synods, to call in the aid 
of the Pope, which at first, given only in the way of advice 
or counsel, gradually ripened into the appellate jurisdiction 
of the Roman See. 

While the national clergy were resisting the usurpations 
of the Pope, they were also engaged in disputes with the 
civil power in their respective states. While civil rulers in 
all parts of Europe claimed and exercised the rights of con- 
voking councils and nominating bishops, on the other hand 
the clergy, almost monopolizing the learning of those rude 
ages, thought that their superior qualifications, and the inter- 
ests both of church and state, authorized them to take a large 



THE REFORMATION. 133 

share of political authority, and the love of power; so natural 
to the human heart, induced them to take advantage of weak 
reigns or the dissensions of a superstitious people, to arrogate 
to themselves the absolute control of civil affairs, even to the 
extent of deposing and electing kings. Thus warring at 
once with the secular authority, and with the spiritual supre- 
macy of Rome, they soon found it necessary to make peace 
with one or the other, and they preferred subjection to a 
chief of their own order, to an humiliating acknowledgment 
of the superiority of laymen. No one who has read with 
attention the history of the famous contest between Thomas 
a Becket and Henry the Second, can be at a loss to under- 
stand the motives, which brought the clergy to acknowledge 
the supremacy of Rome. With a strong leaning towards 
the papacy, because it was their best ally against the secular 
authority, they were not very rigid in their scrutiny of that 
body of pretended canon law, commonly known as the false 
decretals, in which forged precedents for all the encroach- 
ments of Rome were dated back into the earliest ages of the 
church. It is a singular but incontestable fact, that the vast 
fabric of papal power rests in part upon one of the most au- 
dacious and clumsy impostures in the history of mankind. 

I desire to do no injustice. If the greater part of the 
documentary evidence, which the Popes of the dark ages re- 
lied upon to support their pretensions, were the forgeries of 
Isidore; and the desire of aggrandizing their own order was 
one of the motives which induced the clergy to make com- 
mon cause with Rome against the civil rulers of their re- 
spective countries; on the other hand, it should not be for- 
gotten that they held the moral and intellectual power of 
those barbarous times ; that they had the custody of the 
higher elements of social improvement ; that they were the 
allies of learning, morals and peaceful industry ; that it re- 
quired no very great sagacity to perceive, that in order to 



134 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM AND 

preserve their salutary influence over the minds of licentious 
barbarians, it was necessary to present an undivided front 
under a single chief. In their long warfare with ferocious 
animalism, the spiritual army needed a commander-in-chief, 
and who would be so readily thought of for that high office, 
as the bishop of Rome, already enthroned in the veneration 
of Christendom. 

I have already remarked that the clergy, before they be- 
came dependent upon the Holy See, had disputed not only the 
ecclesiastical but temporal authority of civil rulers, and even 
claimed the right of deposing princes, who had invaded the 
privileges or violated the laws of the church. It was not to 
be expected that the Pope, now placed at the head of a dis- 
ciplined army of spiritual warriors, who filled not only the 
churches and monasteries, but the schools and courts and 
cabinets of Christendom, and wielded those arms most terri- 
ble to a superstitious people, would forego any prerogative, 
which had been claimed and exercised by his subalterns. 
Accordingly, age after age, we find a succession of Pontiffs, 
differing widely in mental and moral qualities, systematically 
pursuing one great object, the subjection of the civil to the 
spiritual power. Were they animated by mere selfish ambi- 
tion, or did a nobler motive lie at the bottom of this undevi- 
ating policy 1 

This question would occasion little difficulty to those per- 
sons, who value themselves upon that sort of worldly shrewd- 
ness which never imagines a good motive, where a mean and 
despicable one can possibly be made to account for the fact. 
But that indiscriminating severity of judgment which is 
founded upon a partial knowledge of human nature, that is 
to say, of its weakness and depravity, though it sometimes 
assumes a philosophic air of indulgent pity for that simplicity 
which thinks no evil, is a source of quite as much fallacy and 
injustice. It is the product of cold hearts and shallow brains. 



THE REFORMATION. 135 

Such men, notwithstanding their knowing air and decisive 
tone, seldom see far into anything, and they are especially 
shallow in their judgments of men or ages, which, in spirits 
and modes of thought, differ materially from those with which 
they are familiar. 

As the soul of man preserves the identity of his organiza- 
tion through all the material changes which it undergoes, so 
every social institution has a vital principle, which preserves, 
in the succession of individuals, a chain of organic connection. 
Whenever that principle is lost, the institution must perish, 
though its carcass may long encumber the earth, and clog the 
movements of society. 

The vital principle of the papal power, in the early period 
of its history, was a great and generous idea, debased, no 
doubt, in the minds of particular pontiffs, by a mixture of 
selfish ambition — so strangely compounded of good and evil 
are all the powerful impulses of human nature. It is incon- 
ceivable that a succession of Italian priests could have ac- 
quired and preserved a moral power over the independent 
and high-spirited people of England, France and Germany, 
sufficient to shake the thrones of the haughtiest monarchs, 
unless some higher purpose than merely selfish aggrandize- 
ment could be discerned in the papal policy. What was that 
purpose ] 

I will recall the mind of the reader to the condition of 
society, when the Popes, as the acknowledged head of the 
ecclesiastical state, undertook to impose upon kings and no- 
bles, the restraints of the spiritual authority. Ignorant and 
ferocious animalism contemned art, learning and refinement. 
Law, justice, humanity, were trampled under foot by the 
fierce chieftains of rapacious and blood-thirsty savages, who 
spurned all restraints but those of superstition. Peaceful in- 
dustry was constantly exposed to wanton outrage, and bands 
of plunderers purchased impunity by sharing their spoils 



136 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM AND 

with princes and nobles. Female honor and the sanctity of 
domestic relations were violated even by their legal guardi- 
ans. Private wars filled Europe with bloodshed and confla- 
gration. In such a state of things, when the very magistrates 
set the example of crimes, which it was their duty to punish, 
it is obvious that the only hope of mankind lay in the moral 
power of the ecclesiastics, who, though not untainted by the 
vices of the times, were far in advance of the ruling classes 
of the laity, both in knowledge and in regard for moral obli- 
gations. They were the only champions of intellect and 
morals in their warfare with physical force, who could com- 
mand the respect and restrain the passions of the barbarians. 
It is plain that the freedom of opinion which protestantism 
tolerates, would have been fatal to the infancy of modern 
civilization, for divisions in the church would have destroyed 
her influence. It was necessary that some strong bond should 
unite the spiritual soldiery of Christendom into an unbroken 
phalanx, in order to resist and subdue the inundation of ig- 
norant brutality, which had overwhelmed the ancient civiliz- 
ation. That bond was the central authority of Rome. 

If we would make any progress in the philosophy of his- 
tory, we must be able to transport ourselves into the midst of 
men and ages, whose spirit and modes of thought are very dif- 
ferent from our own, and if possible view their transactions 
in the same light, in which they appeared to open-minded 
contemporaries. We should be guilty of gross injustice to 
view the contest of bishops and kings in the eleventh cen- 
tury with the eyes of Protestants and Americans. In review- 
ing the struggle between the papal power, the chief represen- 
tative of intellect and morals, and the secular tyrants, who 
trampled upon justice, humanity and industry, I can see no 
sufficient reason for taking sides with the latter, as most 
European writers have done. We owe much it is true to 
Alfred and Charlemagne and some of their successors, who 



THE REFORMATION. 137 

Like them were exceptions among the princes of their time, 
arid acted usually in concert with the church. We are liable 
to be misled by the vague denunciations of the tyranny and 
usurpations of the popes, that are to be found in the writ- 
ings of men who were either in the employment, or wished 
to obtain the favor of those princes who quarrelled with the 
Holy See. But here and there a fact stands out from their 
general declamation, which speaks volumes as to the true 
nature of the conflict between the spiritual and secular pow- 
ers. For example, it is stated, that the great Gregory the 
Seventh, who has always been regarded as the founder of the 
temporal dominion of the popes, as well as the most arrogant 
and ambitious among them, with the exception perhaps of 
Innocent III., launched his spiritual thunders at the head of 
Philip I. of France, because that monarch had screened from 
punishment a band of ruffians who had robbed a company of 
merchants; the said Philip sharing no doubt the plunder of 
his proteges. To mitigate the evils of those private wars, 
which desolated Europe and retarded the progress of civiliza- 
tion, the church proclaimed what was called the truce of God, 
by which hostilities were everywhere to cease from Thursday 
evening until Monday morning in each week, including the 
interval between the death and resurrection of our Saviour; 
but so strong was the appetite for blood, that the clergy were 
only partially successful in enforcing this salutary regulation. 
In short, I think that whosoever will candidly examine the his- 
tory of the first half of the middle ages in reference to this 
matter, will find that the spiritual power was generally wield- 
ed for the preservation of order, the restraint of oppression, 
the defence of the weak, the protection and encouragement 
of learning and industry. 

The preservation of religion itself required in ages of ig- 
norance and licence, ecclesiastical organization, which deriv- 
ed strength from union. Divisions would have been fatal at 
12 



138 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM AND 

a time when the mass of the people were under the necessity 
of receiving their faith from the church, for it is idle to sup- 
pose that the scriptures could have been the rule of faith to 
any considerable number, when, before the invention of 
printing, a single copy of the bible was worth a small for- 
tune, and few, besides the clergy, knew how to read. 

I therefore look upon these two facts as the chief sources 
of spiritual power, in the earlier portion of the middle ages ; 
first, that the church was generally on the side of the people 
against their oppressors; second, that to the mass of mankind 
she was the only accessible repository of religious knowledge, 
the only source upon which they could rely for guidance 
through life, and consolation in death. The secondary means, 
which were employed to extend and perpetuate that power, 
are well known to all readers of history. I shall dwell upon 
only one of them, the celibacy of the clergy. 

The moral beauty of man's nature implies the subordina- 
tion of his selfish and sensual passions to his reason and moral 
faculties. This unquestionable truth has been perverted into a 
notion very common among the enthusiasts of almost all relig- 
ions, as well as some sects of philosophers, that any sensual in- 
dulgence is so far a derogation from the true dignity of cur 
spiritual nature. Among the early Christians, celibacy, though 
not enjoined as a positive obligation on any class of persons, 
was regarded as a lofty attainment of spiritual perfection, 
and as a glorious triumph over the lower propensities. This 
opinion gave rise to the monastic orders, whose self-denial 
was regarded by licentious barbarians as a miraculous victory 
over the strongest impulses of human nature. 

When the austerities of the cloister were displayed before 
the public by the mendicant friars, the churches of the par- 
ochial clergy were deserted by the people, who flocked to 
hear the preaching of those barefooted militia of the Holy 
See. Their success excited the envy of the secular clergy, 



THE REFORMATION. 139 

who were thus induced to acquiesce in a regulation, which 
however painful and absurd, might restore to them the ven- 
eration of their flocks. For a while it had the desired effect, 
yet the pope and the bishops found it a difficult task to en- 
force the universal observance of the law of clerical celibacy. 
When finally established, for a time it produced the effects 
which had been desired and expected ; for the superstitious 
people beheld the marvellous austerity of the cloister dis- 
played by the whole body of the clergy, who seemed to 
rise above all the weakness of humanity. It also placed at 
the disposal of the Holy See a body of men, who in the ab- 
sence of all the cares and pleasures of domestic life, conse- 
crated all the energies of their souls to the service of the 
church. In the latter part of the middle ages, the practice 
of concubinage and the dreadful corruption of morals caused 
by the rule of celibacy, contributed greatly, by weakening 
the hold of the ecclesiastics on the veneration of the people, 
to prepare the way for the reformation. And here we may 
remark, in passing, that the germs of the worst peculiarities 
of Catholicism may be found, if not in the apostolic age 
itself, at least in that which immediately succeeded ; and so 
gradual has been their expansion into that full-blown luxur- 
iance, to which the sharp pruning knives of the reformers 
were applied, that the attempts which have been made to fix 
their origin at certain particular times are perfectly idle. All 
errors that have taken any lasting hold of the human mind, 
have been formed by gradual accretions. All the abuses, as 
well as all the blessings of social systems, have their fibres 
running far back, until they are lost in the depths of the past. 
I have said that the spirit of the papal policy was originally 
great and magnanimous. That intentionally or unintention- 
ally it did much in those early ages for the cause of civiliza- 
tion, will not be denied. But the possessors of absolute power 
are apt to forget the purposes for which it was acquired. We 



140 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM AND 

may illustrate the progress of degeneracy by the history of 
an individual, who engages in the pursuit of gain with the 
hope of acquiring an honest independence, and the means of 
doing good ; but as he progresses, his nobler feelings are 
gradually supplanted by the mere love of accumulation ; he 
becomes more and more eager in the pursuit of wealth, long 
after his original purposes have been accomplished ; then he 
waxes fat and proud, forgets or tramples on the poor, whom 
he begins to look upon as inferior beings, and seeks to out- 
shine all his neighbors in luxury and splendor ; and finally, 
perhaps loses all for which he had sacrificed his original sim- 
plicity. In like manner the progress of the spiritual domin- 
ion of Rome may be divided into several stages, which can- 
not of course be distinguished with perfect accuracy, as well 
on account of the fluctuations attending - a succession of men 

o 

of various mental and moral qualities, as because all social 
and moral changes are so gradual that the points of transition 
cannot be marked with precision. We may find in the first 
period pontiffs who anticipated the degeneracy of the last, 
while the last may show remains of the spirit and policy 
which, in my general distribution, I have assigned to the first. 
The general course of a stream is easily distinguished from 
its particular windings. 

I have sufficiently indicated what I believe to have been 
the true spirit and policy of the court of Rome during the 
first period. After the time of Innocent the Third, 
whose extraordinary talents and energy almost realized 
the vast and daring scheme of Hildebrand for bringing the 
western nations under a theocratic dominion, the popes, 
intoxicated with power, began to lose sight of the purposes 
for which it had been originally conceded. Not only were 
the last sparks of independence extinguished in the national 
churches, but the kings of the earth might be said to hold 
their crowns at the will of the arrogant successors of the 



THE REFORMATION. 141 

fishermen of Gallilee. The popes began to levy more sub- 
stantial tribute than the homage and submission of the west- 
ern nations. Various expedients were devised by which 
vast sums of money, from every quarter of Europe, were 
drawn into the papal treasury. 

In the third period, power almost absolute, and pecuniary 
resources well-nigh inexhaustible, produced their usual ef- 
fects. The popes began to forfeit the veneration of the peo- 
ple by rapacity, ostentation and corruption of manners not 
surpassed, if equalled by the most profligate courts of Eu- 
rope. The state of moral feeling must have been low indeed, 
when such a monster as Alexander VI. dared to pollute the 
pontifical palace with crimes that cannot be named to ears 
polite. The corruption of the head of the church gradually 
spread through the whole body. The simple Germans and 
English, far away from the chief scene of debauchery, might 
still love the religion of their fathers, and venerate the spirit- 
ual chief of Christendom. But even among them, the higher 
orders of the clergy were as much distinguished for rapacity 
and ostentation as the monks were for idleness and supersti- 
tion. 

The people of Italy, who witnessed the disgusting specta- 
cle of ecclesiastical degradation, lost all respect for a relig- 
ion that was disgraced in the persons of its highest function- 
aries. The outward respect to the gorgeous ceremonial of 
the church, which the intelligent found it prudent to pay, 
concealed a general infidelity ; and many of the clergy them- 
selves, like the augurs of ancient Rome, could not look in 
each other's faces without laughing. In other countries, the 
chief source of disaffection was the enormous exactions by 
which the court of Rome plundered all Europe. This was 
especially the case in Germany, the simple-hearted people of 
which were the peculiar prey of Romish rapacity. 

Meanwhile, the way was gradually preparing for that great 



142 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM AND 

revolution which was to shake the fabric of ecclesiastical 
power to its deepest foundations, and separate completely 
those elements of national and individual freedom, which in 
the church of the middle ages were bound up with the prin- 
ciple of Catholic unity ; for there was far greater freedom in 
matters of opinion, far more protestant individuality in the 
church before the reformation, than many have supposed. 
Indeed the reformation, like all other great revolutions, was 
merely an elimination of principles, which had been lurking 
in the ancient order of things. It decomposed the church, if 
I may be allowed the expression, separating the elements 
first of national, then of individual freedom, which had been 
lying side by side with catholicity and authority, usually in 
imperfect combination, or rather subordination to them, some- 
times in temporary and partial revolt, but never till then 
in clear and decided hostility ; and leaving the residuum of 
spiritual despotism, which the council of Trent for the first 
time consolidated into an inflexible system of dogmatic theo- 
logy. The present Romish system is little more than the 
slag of that furnace of inquiry, which had been throwing out 
occasional sparks, before the breath of Luther blew it into 
a devouring flame. Let us glance at those transient and 
partial conflicts in the bosom of the church between protest- 
ant freedom and catholic unity. 

I have already noticed the scholastic philosophy, which by 
the boldness of its inquiries sometimes alarmed the sentinels 
of orthodoxy. Before the reformation, however, the method 
of Aristotle had sunk into a mere logical legerdemain, with 
which the monks amused their stupid indolence. 

The first storm which assailed the church was the famous 
heresy of the Albigenses, which, originally imported from 
the east, spread over Languedoc and Provence — at that time 
the best governed, the most refined and intellectual part of 
Christian Europe. Their doctrines were Manichean, a com- 



THE REFORMATION. 143 

pound of Christianity and the oriental philosophy. Their 
wandering minstrels, the troubadours, so prominent in the 
history of modern literature, were welcomed with delight in 
castle-halls and ladies' boudoirs, and mingled the poison of 
their subtle heresies with the voluptuous poetry which they 
had borrowed from the Arab conquerors of Spain. The 
northern nobility of France, instigated partly by bigotry, 
chiefly perhaps by political motives, promptly obeyed the 
summons of the pope to exterminate those dangerous sectar- 
ies, who happened to be the subjects of the count of Thou- 
louse, whose increasing power and opulence had excited the 
jealousy of the other feudal chieftains. A fanatic monk bore 
the cross before those fierce champions of the church, who 
spared neither age nor sex of a peaceful, industrious and pol- 
ished people, and turned the garden of Europe into a desert. 

John Wickliffe was one of those men who seem to have 
been born an age too soon. He was a man of ability and 
learning, and apparently well qualified to have been the 
leader of the great movement which was reserved for a sub- 
sequent period. There is some reason, however, to believe 
that he was inferior to Luther in the spirit and firmness 
necessary for such an undertaking. The doctrines of Wick- 
liffe were suppressed in England by the secular arm, but 
they took deep root in Germany, and were so widely diffus- 
ed, that the Hussites, after their apostle, who was a disciple 
of Wickliffe, had been put to death at Constance in contempt 
of every principle of justice and good faith, were able for a 
long time to resist the whole power of the empire. 

From time immemorial the peasants of Switzerland and 
Savoy, fenced in by precipices and avalanches from the cor- 
ruptions of the world, preserved the purity and simplicity 
of their manners, and from time to time sent forth from their 
mountains a voice of warning and rebuke. It is not known 
with certainty what were their peculiar doctrines. 



144 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM AND 

The church was able to suppress without difficulty the 
partial insurrections which preceded the reformation, nor 
was she very scrupulous as to the means which she employed 
for that purpose. But the fires which seemed to have been 
quenched in blood, still burned under cover, ready to burst 
forthwith greater fury at a favorable juncture. Meanwhile 
the papal power was much weakened by the great schism 
growing out of the conflicting claims of the pontiffs of Rome 
and Avignon, which distracted the Christian world for nearly 
forty years. Towards the end of this period, the devout 
were scandalized by the extraordinary spectacle of three sev- 
eral popes, launching their spiritual thunders at each others' 
heads, and filling the world with uproar and confusion. As it 
was utterly impossible to determine the validity of their respec- 
tive claims, the council of Constance, where the national ele- 
ment of protestantism for the last time took an imposing part 
in regulating the affairs of the church, to which it was shortly 
to be arrayed in open hostility, having prevailed upon two of 
the claimants of the pontifical chair to resign, deposed the 
other, and elected a new pope, who made Rome once more 
the spiritual capitol of Christendom. 

The anxiety of the popes to extend their territorial domin- 
ion in Italy, hastened the decline of their power. They lost 
much of the veneration of the people, when they descended 
from their lofty position as the fathers of the church, the 
chiefs of the spiritual commonwealth of Europe, to mingle in 
the squabbles of local politics. There was something expan- 
sive and imposing in the moral guardianship of the great 
family of Christian nations, which threw even over the tyran- 
ny and rapacity of the Holy See, a spell, which was broken 
by the narrow and undisguised worldliness of territorial 
aggrandizement. 

The latter part of the fifteenth century was signalized by 
great advances in knowledge, to which the invention of 



THE REFORMATION. 145 

printing gave a powerful impulse. Old habits of thinking 
were broken up by the marvellous discoveries, which aston- 
ished Europe from time to time, and the increasing light 
showed more vividly the contrast between the arrogance, 
rapacity and worldliness of the popes and the clergy, and the 
humility, self-devotion and simplicity of manners, which 
distinguished the founders of religion. From what source, 
it may be asked, could any just notions be derived of the 
purity and simplicity of primitive Christianity 1 The ques- 
tion would only show our liability to be deceived by those 
general pictures of society that we find in history, in which a 
few prominent features in the foreground throw into the shade 
all the smaller but more numerous details. When we read 
of the vices and ignorance of the clergy, and the superstition 
of the people, in what are called the dark ages, we are ready 
to imagine that truth and faithfulness and genuine piety had 
been banished from the world. But however difficult it may 
be for some to realize the fact, men were actually thinking 
and? feeling in those dark ages, in which we find the rudi- 
ments of all that is most glorious in modern civilization. 
Notwithstanding the general corruption, net only society 
at large, but the monasteries, the parish churches, even the 
higher ranks of the clergy could show many living examples 
of healthy natures, which could separate and assimilate the 
truth that was mixed up with error and moral perversions 
in the spiritual food of the children of the church. We 
must not forget that the enthusiastic study of the Greek lan- 
guage and literature [had turned the attention of the learned 
to the earliest and purest monuments of Christianity. The 
Scriptures, or at least portions of them, had been translated 
into several of the living languages of Europe, yet it is prob- 
able that they were little read by the common people before 
the time of Luther. 

That great reformer did not exclusively originate a single 
13 



146 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM AND 

great thought, a single deep feeling. Had he done so, he 
would have been one of the martyrs of premature move- 
ments, not one of the leaders of revolutions. Like all other 
men of the latter class, his boldness, his earnestness, his 
power of infusing a fiery and enduring life into everything 
which he touched, rendered him the medium, through which 
the thinking men around him came to understand and sym- 
pathize with each other. His capacious mind brought to- 
gether, in one incarnate word, the thoughts and feelings 
which had been silently working in the great deep of the 
popular mind. What were the most potent of those ele- 
ments of revolution] 

Those who ascribe the reformation to selfish passions, 
excited by the hope of emancipation from salutary restraints, 
or of sharing in the plunder of the church on the one hand, 
and those who suppose it to have originated in opposition to 
any peculiar theological doctrines on the other, seem to be 
equally in error. The former do injustice to the mass of 
mankind, by leaving out of their calculations, the honest in- 
dignation of the people at the rapacity, tyranny and profliga- 
cy of their superiors, especially of those who have the care 
of religion, while the latter ascribe to the laity of that age, a 
clearer understanding of the subtleties of dogmatic theology 
than is even now possessed by a majority of the members of 
the most enlightened denominations. The real presence and 
purgatory might have exercised the skill of theological glad- 
iators, but would never have produced a great popular 
movement, had they not been accidentally identified with a 
stupendous system of ecclesiastical corruption and tyranny. 
This is clear enough from the fact that the real presence, 
most difficult of the Catholic dogmas to be digested by rea- 
son, was retained by Luther and his immediate followers, 
and has found supporters among the most learned of the 
Anglican divines. One doctrine, it is true, or rather one 



THE REFORMATION. 147 

historical fact, the very essence of Christianity, that the Di- 
vine Man had, by his life and death, produced a full and 
sufficient remedy for the moral wants and diseases of all who 
should receive that provision by faith, was relieved of the 
inventions with which priestly cunning and popular credulity 
had overloaded and crushed it out of its proper place in the 
Christian system. But this truth, though obscured, had 
never been lost sight of, and the reformers merely removed 
the rust of ages and restored its original lustre. 

It was not the symbolism, but the spirit of the church, her 
arrogant claims to the absolute sovereignty of the human 
understanding ; the vices, the rapacity, the tyranny of the 
popes and the hierarchies ; the ignorance and superstition of 
the inferior clergy ; such were the chief causes of the reform- 
ation. Men who neither understood nor regarded the dis- 
putes of polemic theology, were unwilling any longer to 
forego the privileges of rational beings by submission to the 
authority of so called vicegerents of the Almighty, who were 
chiefly distinguished by avarice, luxury and worldly ambi- 
tion; who supported their arrogant dominion, and made war 
upon individual freedom and national independence, by 
bloody persecutions, enormous pecuniary exactions, and all 
the cunningly devised machinery of ghostly usurpation. — 
There was a wide-spread disaffection especially among the 
Germans, who, on account of the mutual relations of the 
empire and the court of Rome, were more exposed than 
others to the rapacity of the latter ; but it is probable that in 
few minds had it shaped itself into a definite purpose of 
breaking those meshes which habit, education and venerable 
antiquity had woven around the awakened intellect of Eu- 
rope, when Luther arose to make men acquainted with their 
own thoughts, and give utterance to their silent indignation 
in a voice which shook the world and awoke the dead ; pierced 
the sepulchres where moral life had been entombed for ages, 



148 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM AND 

and raised up an exceeding great army to battle for truth, 
reason and liberty. We may sum up the causes of the re- 
formation in very few words. Like most of the great revo- 
lutions of modern society, it was the revolt of free spirits 
against profligate despotism. This was everywhere the life 
of the movement; but in England and some parts of the con- 
tinent, it was an under-current, concealed at first by the 
reaction of nationality against catholicity, which even attempt- 
ed, but in vain, to drive back the individual element when it 
rose to the surface. 

Both of the moving principles of the reformation, the na- 
tional and individual, found a representative in Luther, who 
has shared the fate of all the great leaders of society, of 
having his character drawn in the brightest or blackest colors, 
according as the pencil has been in the hand of a friend or an 
enemy. I shall not aspire to delineate either an angel or a 
demon, but simply a great-hearted, deep-minded man, whose 
sagacity laid open the very heart of those momentous subjects, 
which he grappled with fiery earnestness and unconquerable 
heroism, while, on the other hand, his nervous irritability and 
bilious vehemence frequently betrayed him into gross viola- 
tions of propriety and candor. 

A poor boy of the humblest parentage, when at school, he 
was obliged to beg from door to door, the means of supplying 
his little wants. The hardships of his youth and his consti- 
tional melancholy strengthened his devotional tendencies. 
He was full of poetry and passion, and his powerful, but 
somewhat gloomy imagination, probably beheld in the clouds 
that lowered upon the morning of his existence, the portents 
of a stormy future. He turned from a bleak and frowning 
world to where the glories of eternity were gilding the happy 
mansions of that " city which hath foundations, whose maker 
and builder is God." Such are the uses of adversity. 

In such a state of mind, the death of a friend, and the bolt 



THE REFORMATION. 149 

of lightning, which struck near him during a remarkable 
storm to which he happened to be exposed, seemed warnings 
direct from heaven to renounce the uncertain vanities of time. 
He entered a monastery, where he distinguished himself by 
his austerities, as well as the deep and bitter agony of soul 
with which he wrestled, for an assurance of the favor of God. 
The natural impulses of a fiery and vigorous youth would 
sometimes assert their claims ; the world might appear fairer 
when he supposed that he was cut off from it forever; the 
imperious desires and fierce struggles with which his soul was 
shaken, were regarded by him as suggestions of the evil one, 
and evidences of inherent depravity, which almost drove him 
to madness. He sought relief in still more rigorous austeri- 
ties, but in vain, for prayer and fasting could not silence the 
voice of nature which was urging him into those very scenes 
which he thought he had renounced forever. The agonizing 
sense of guilt, in part, at least, the result of morbid tender- 
ness of conscience, or erroneous views of moral obligation, 
was at length removed by a clearer understanding of that life- 
giving doctrine, that faith secures to the believer the entire 
benefits of the all-sufficient work of the Son of God. This 
doctrine of justification by faith, which, as already observed, 
had been much obscured by ascetic notions and the devices 
of the popes and his clergy for raising money, thenceforth 
occupied the first place in the theological system of the re- 
former. As Luther suffered so much in his warfare with the 
flesh, it is not surprising that he afterwards showed some 
disposition to compromise with that formidable enemy. 

Luther's visit to Rome during the pontificate of the mar- 
tial and magnificent Julius, was an era in his life. It is easy 
to imagine the feelings with which the monk, whose deep 
and strong affections, denied all other outlets, were wholly 
given to God and his church, approached the spiritual cap- 
ital of Christendom, — the fountain-head of ecclesiastical au- 



150 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM AND 

thority, the eternal centre of the moral Providence of God, 
the holy city in short, associated in his imagination with all 
that was most sacred and venerable. If his German cloister 
had ever been penetrated by reports of the corruptions of the 
magnificent court of the pontiff, such rumors had not made 
sufficient impression on his mind, deeply occupied as it was 
with his own depravity, to impair materially his veneration 
for the holy city and the father of the church. 

What then must have been his astonishment and disgust, 
when, on arriving in Italy, he found the people neglected by 
their spiritual guides, the higher ranks ignorant or regardless 
of religion, the clergy both secular and monastic abandoned 
to debauchery ] At Rome, which he expected to find a city 
of saints, his primitive and unworldly notions were matter of 
derision to the licentious scepticism of the highest ecclesias- 
tical dignitaries. His poetical temperament could not fail to 
be impressed by the grandeur of that " marble wilderness," 
which preserved a lively image of the ancient magnificence 
of the " eternal city." But neither the glories of art, the 
recollections of the past, the congregated genius and learning 
which flourished under the munificent patronage of the papal 
court, could for one instant bewilder his moral convictions, 
or induce him to look with the least degree of allowance 
upon worldliness, licentiousness and hypocrisy. After his 
return to Germany, he abated nothing of the austerity of his 
manners, the severity of his doctrines or the fervor of his 
devotion. It is probable that this journey had the effect of 
impairing greatly the prestige of those ancient institutions, 
against which all his powers were soon to be arrayed in open 
hostility. Though he dreamed not as yet of reforming the 
church, or revolting from Rome, the boldness of his preach- 
ing, in which he tore away from theology the scholastic cob- 
webs in which it had been enveloped by monkish imbecility, 
showed that he possessed one of those searching, original 



THE REFORMATION. 151 

Intellects, which are so dangerous to established abuses. Yet 
he might have remained an obscure and faithful minister of 
the church, but for circumstances such as short-sighted mor- 
tals term accidental. 

Leo X., the successor of Julius, was one of the most bril- 
liant and accomplished men of his age. A scion of an illus- 
trious family, he was a favorable example of the spirit and 
-cultivation of Italian society, — at that time the most refined 
and intellectual on earth. There is reason to believe that he 
disguised the careless scepticism of epicurean philosophy, 
under a decent conformity to the outward observances of 
religion. His elegant tastes and liberal patronage filled his 
court with artists, poets and philosophers. His munificent 
encouragement of the genius and learning, which threw a 
lustre upon his reign, exhausted the papal treasury; he 
was desirous to signalize his pontificate by the completion 
of St. Peter's church, one of the wonders of the world, and 
for that purpose determined to sell out the large stock of 
supererogatory merits of the saints which were still on hand. 

The business of indulgences is a remarkable example of 
the difficulty of discerning the truth of history through the 
distorting medium of party prejudice. An indulgence seems 
to have been a remission of the temporal punishment of sin, 
in other words, of those various penances, which, as they 
were imposed by the church, could be dispensed with by her. 
But the sceptical Leo and his servile clergy, in their anxiety 
to replenish the exhausted coffers of the church, would not 
be very rigorous with those agents who transcended their 
authority, and extracted larger sums from the remorse of 
their customers by promising an exemption from the pains 
of purgatory and the fires of hell. 

It is strange that writers, who admit the insolence and ex- 
cesses of Tetzel, should seriously attribute Luther's violent 
denunciations of what he, in common with all other intelli- 



152 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM AND 

gent men, must have looked upon as an abominable impost- 
ure, to the pitiful pique of an Augustinian friar, because the 
Dominicans were the favored agents of the infamous traffic. 
This hypothesis is a specimen of that shallow and despicable 
philosophy of history, in which man is a mere selfish animal, 
always the deviser, the tool or the victim of imposture. 

Beginning by an attack upon abuses which were generally 
condemned, the views of Luther expanded so gradually, that 
he was probably startled himself, when he found that the 
breach had widened to an irreparable extent, and that the 
doors of the church were closed against him forever. The 
dispute might have been adjusted, had his antagonists acted 
with prudence and moderation. But the pope and his cler- 
gy, unaccustomed to opposition except from princes, could 
not brook the free and fearless tone of the eloquent monk, 
whose constitutional vehemence carried him farther than he 
had intended to go, and nothing but conciliation was wanting 
to induce him to retrace his steps far enough to bring him 
back to his spiritual allegiance. Towards a monarch, secure 
in the loyalty of a great nation, the pope might have adopted 
the plan of conciliation ; but that an humble monk could suc- 
cessfully defy the power which had trampled upon the necks 
of kings, was not to be thought of. 

Luther was too high-spirited and too well satisfied that he 
was right in the main, to hesitate long, when the measures 
of the court of Rome left him no choice but unconditional 
submission or open defiance. Yet, after he had brought him- 
self to contemplate a separation from the centre of Catholic 
unity as inevitable, we need not be surprised that in hours of 
nervous depression, he showed some distrust of his own pos- 
ition, and a willingness to accommodate the dispute by larger 
concessions than his own judgment approved, when he found 
that they did not satisfy his opponents, and, roused by their 
unreasonable demands, he was himself again. In relation to 



THE REFORMATION. 153 

this part of Luther's conduct, one might think that the partial 
writers on either side had conspired to drive truth and justice 
out of the world. As his apparent tergiversations admit of 
an easy explanation which detracts nothing from his sincerity, 
and is applicable to other leaders of social movements, who 
have consciously or unconsciously recognized the great truth, 
that change and conservation must combine in all real and 
lasting improvement, and have sometimes been sorely per- 
plexed to adjust their respective proportions, I hope to be 
indulged in a good-natured attempt to rescue the memory of 
the reformer from the folly of his friends and the malice of 
his enemies. 

There are many persons so thoroughly convinced of their 
own infallibility, that they never distrust the soundness of 
their own conclusions, nor have the least respect for the 
views of those who differ from them. But Luther, with all 
his self-reliance was far from being blind to the arguments 
that micrht be urged against him, and some of which had then 
much plausibility, — of which they have been deprived by the 
experience of three centuries. His feelings towards the 
church were very different from those of a modern Protest- 
ant. He had been nurtured in her bosom ; it was hard to 
break the spell which her venerable associations had thrown 
over his imaginative mind ; and during those fits of nervous 
melancholy to which he was subject, he might feel that he 
was fearfully alone, and bearing up against the current of ages. 
His hours of despondency might be haunted by distressing 
doubts, and at such times he might be ready to sink under the 
tremendous responsibility of battling with an institution, which 
had been for ages the only source of religious knowledge 
and everlasting hope, to millions of the human family. He 
might fear, as his enemies told him, that he was introducing 
into the moral world anarchy, which would be dangerous or 
fatal to the best interests of society ; for facts had not then 



154 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM AND 

demonstrated the fallacy of such predictions. Let us be 
generous in our judgments of those great men who have 
borne our burdens and fought our battles. 

All doubts and hesitation vanished, when he was called 
upon to confront the powers and principalities of earth. In 
every critical emergency he was clear, decided and fearless. 
His deportment at the Diet of Worms is a great historical 
picture, scarce paralleled in moral sublimity since the ap- 
pearance of St. Paul at the bar of the pro-consul. It was 
now to be seen how the monk, who, from the seclusion of his 
cloister, had made the world ring with the thunders of his 
indignant eloquence, would bear the actual presence of those 
mighty ones of the earth, whose corruptions he had denounc- 
ed and whose authority he had defied. Here was an assem- 
blage of everything which could overwhelm a secluded and 
nervous student. Glittering files of those soldiers who 
shortly afterwards annihilated the chivalry of France, on the 
field of Pavia ; a multitude, composed of timorous friends 
and insolent foes, thronging the streets, and covering the 
house-tops, eager to catch a sight of the reformer, or awaiting 
with breathless anxiety the result of a meeting, which might 
decide the fate of the Christian world ; and a dazzling array 
of all that was most illustrious, by rank, power and dignity, 
in the empire of the west. At the head of a crowd of spirit- 
ual and temporal princes, sat a youthful monarch, upon 
whose dominions the sun never set, who had already shown 
capacity equal to the support of this weighty diadem, and 
who was by no means favorably inclined to Luther. And 
there, in that august presence, stood the charity scholar, the 
son of the Saxon peasant, arraigned for setting at defiance a 
power which had been acknowledged through ages by all the 
western nations. But he stood there, calm, undaunted, the 
master of his own mind and of the fate of those around him. 
The congregated majesty of a great empire was nothing to 



THE REFORMATION. 155 

him who had wrestled with the principalities and powers of 
the invisible world. Neither the frown of the monarch, the 
entreaties of his friends nor the threats of his enemies, when 
the cruel deaths of John Huss and Jerome were yet fresh in 
the memories of all, could shake his resolution for an instant. 
The destiny of millions, the fate of distant ages, hung upon his 
lips, and his soul was equal to the tremendous importance of 
the crisis. 

This is the same man, who assailed his adversaries with 
ferocious invectives, seasoned with the slang of the alehouse, 
who set up for himself claims quite as arrogant, and still 
more manifestly absurd than those of the Pope, and told 
Carstadt, who asked him for the proofs of his divine mission, 
to go to the devil. To complete the picture of a great but 
irregular nature, kindness even from his enemies would 
sometimes move him to tears ; his fiery heart was full of the 
tenderest affections; he had the liveliest sensibility to the 
beauties of nature and the peaceful pleasures of domestic 
life; and he sought relief in music, which he passionately 
loved, from the demon of melancholy that darkened his exist- 
ence. He was no flowery Carmel, dimpling a summer sea 
with the ephemeral fragrance of the eastern clime, nor yet a 
majestic Chimborazo, reposing in mid-heaven ; but rather a 
world-shaking volcano, ploughed by the lava flood and torn 
by the earthquake. But the same fires which blasted his 
foes, aroused and illuminated mankind ; soft waters welled 
from the rifted granite, and flowers of paradise bloomed on 
the very margin of the river of fire. 

The Lutheran reformation has not proved very expan- 
sive, chiefly perhaps because the national element mingled 
so largely in it. It was not merely a rising up of the hu- 
man mind against priestly tyranny, but of Germany against 
Rome. If we would trace the true life of Protestant liberty 
to its fountain-head, we must look for it in a little city on 



156 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM AND 

the shore of Lake Leman, and under the shadow of the 
Alps, which emerged from the darkness and storms of the 
middle ages with its republican franchises unimpaired, and 
a high-spirited people willing and able to defend them. 

Second only and scarcely second to that of Luther in the 
history of the reformation is the name of John Calvin. In- 
deed it may be doubted whether, any merely human intel- 
lect has exercised a more extensive or durable influence 
over the destinies of mankind. In all countries where Cal- 
vinism has prevailed, it has manifested similar characteristics, 
and produced similar moral and political phenomena. The 
Presbyterians of Scotland and Holland, the Huguenots of 
France, the Puritans of Old and New England, have all been 
stamped partly by their dogmas, partly by their institutions, 
with a family likeness which can be plainly discerned through 
the peculiarities of national character, and local circumstan- 
ces. Intense enthusiasm, under the control and guidance of 
rigorous mental discipline, and concealed by an austere de- 
portment ; zeal for the diffusion of knowledge ; uncomprom- 
ising opposition to encroachments by civil rulers upon their 
own spiritual privileges ; stern resistance to tyranny, and a 
singular freedom from those illusions of the imagination, which 
have made other men glory in their servitude ; such are 
the most striking and universal traits of Calvinists. Every- 
where they have fought the battles of freedom. It was Cal- 
vinism that struck the first effectual blows in that great strug- 
gle of Liberty against Power, which, begun in England, 
transferred to America, and from thence to France, has been 
the leading historical fact of the last two centuries, and will 
continue until the respective boundaries of the belligerents 
have been adjusted. It cannot be denied, that in the old 
world and the new, Calvinism has been the rough and mor- 
ose, but watchful and true-hearted foster-mother of civil and 



THE REFORMATION. 157 

religious liberty. The causes of an historical fact of such 
magnitude deserve an impartial consideration. 

The spirit of the system was embodied in the founder 
himself, whose mind, austere, vigorous, practical, regulative, 
was singularly free from visionary tendencies. Destitute of 
the imagination and impulsiveness of Luther, he was much 
better fitted for framing a regular and compact system of 
doctrine and discipline. That system, wherever it has been 
adopted, has shown a remarkable tendency to bring the 
imagination and the passions into subjection to the judgment 
and moral feelings. Calvanistic communities favor the de- 
velopment of the solid, much more than of the beautiful 
properties of our nature. No amount of gilding can make 
base metal current among them. Other men may tolerate 
oppression for the sake of national glory or the prestige of 
venerable associations, or generous, though blind loyalty; the 
genuine Calvinist is never cheated by the poetical sentiments, 
but resists to the death the least invasion of his rights, by 
whomsoever, or under whatsoever pretext it may be made. 

We should take into consideration, also, in estimating the 
causes of its political tendencies, the place of its birth, re- 
publican Geneva, where men had been accustomed, from 
time immemorial, to the exercise of democratic franchises. 
Calvanism was born and brought up in the midst of munici- 
pal liberty. When Calvin's most illustrious disciple, John 
Knox, transplanted into the Scottish monarchy the religious 
system of the Genevan reformer, he gave it a republican or- 
ganization. Every one knows how durable are impressions 
made upon the infancy, not only of an individual, but of a 
society, whether civil or religious. Accordingly, in all Cal- 
vinistic communities, the people have exercised a large share 
of ecclesiastical power. Men will carry with them into civil 
life, the habits formed in the management of their religious 
affairs. They do not usually act upon one set of principles 



158 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM AND 

in their spiritual, and a totally different set in their temporal 
concerns* 

The popular institutions of Calvinism readily suggested 
the importance of educating the people, who were to exercise 
powers affecting their temporal and eternal warfare. Ac- 
cordingly, we find that zeal for the diffusion of knowledge, 
especially for bringing the minds of youth under such dis- 
cipline, as tends to form habits of close and rigorous thinking, 
is a universal trait of Calvinistic societies, and the corner- 
stone of their superiority in freedom, order and general 
prosperity. There is another reason why sagacious Calvin- 
ists should desire that the people should form habits of severe 
thinking. Calvinistic dogmas are very repulsive, if not en- 
tirely unintelligible, to undisciplined minds. Nothing but 
rigorous logic is likely to conduct an inquirer to the system 
of doctrines, which the Genevese reformer digested from the 
writings of St. Paul and Augustine. 

The question concerning the freedom of the will is a point 
of departure in theological philosophy, from which the direc- 
tion, that the mind takes, must determine, in a great measure, 
its views of the nature of man and the government of God. 
The doctrine of contingent free will, allowed even by its 
advocates, to be an incomprehensible mystery to which reason 
would never lead us, places man in the centre of the moral 
world, and fixes our attention upon the capacities and respon- 
sibilities of a being, who has the astonishing power of de- 
feating the purposes of the Almighty. The Calvinistic 
doctrine, on the contrary, humbles man in the dust, and fills 
the soul with the terrible sovereignty of Him " who doeth 
his will in the armies of Heaven and amongst the inhabitants 
of the earth." But while it sinks the race, the greater part 
of which is left to perish in the ruins of the fall, it raises the 
few, who are rescued to the ineffable dignity of the peculiar 
people of God. It is not surprising that men, who regarded 



THE REFORMATION. 159 

themselves as a spiritual aristocracy, whose patents were re- 
corded in Heaven and signed by the Father of Eternity, 
should resent the insolence and tyranny of the sons of Belial. 
But I must pause, for I do not wish to invite a comparison 
with Mr. Macaulay, who, in his magnificent article on Milton, 
has treated this very subject with his wonted vigor of thought, 
and epigrammatic terseness of language. 

The surest foundation of civil and religious liberty would 
be the general prevalence of fairness and tolerance, love of 
even-handed justice, and respect for the feelings and opin- 
ions of others. But this is, unfortunately, one of the ideals 
of society. The spirit of the maxim, " Do to others as ye 
would that they would do to you," while it is one of the 
highest, is also one of the rarest qualities of human nature, 
and Calvinists can claim no larger, and perhaps not so large 
a share of it, as some other sects. Party ism, from its very 
nature, is more or less at war with justice. Man, with all his 
glorious capacities and ages of progress, has still so much of 
the mule and tiger about him, that the preservation of liberty 
requires a certain equilibrium of contending parties and in- 
terests, either of which would be tyrannical enough, if 
allowed full scope for its intolerance and selfishness. Hence 
it is literally true, that freedom has grown up under cover of 
the antagonism of tyrannies. 

It is not surprising, that those who are least patient of 
oppression, when they happen to be the weaker party, are 
not unfrequently the most overbearing, when they become 
strong enough to trample on their enemies. But it has so 
happened, that Calvinists have generally been thrown into 
opposition to arbitrary power, for the austerity of their 
manners, the severity of their doctrines, the republicanism of 
their church governments are not suited to the atmosphere 
of courts. Even where Calvinism has been in alliance with 
the state, not only the people, but many of the clergy have 



160 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM AND 

been brought into collision with tyrants by their ungracious 
and inflexible resistance to the encroachments of the civil 
power upon their spiritual privileges. Morose and bigoted 
the Calvinist may be, but however great his faults, servility 
to the rulers of this world never was one of them. 

The reformation, as already intimated, like all other great 
revolutions, decomposed society, bringing latent elements to 
the surface, giving them new vigor, and developing, at oppo- 
site poles, principles that had had before lain in more cr less 
imperfect combination. It was a fiery furnace, which evolved 
from the church of the middle ages, the elements of nationality 
and individuality, and gave a rapid and immense expansion 
to the latter, while the residuum of Catholicity, after the 
council of Trent had given it a definite and unchangeable 
symbol, hardened into that spiritual despotism, which still 
holds in subjection so large a portion of the civilized world. 
Luther and his compeers broke off the hollow truce between 
liberty of thought and ecclesiastical authority, and arrayed 
them in open hostility. To adjust the respective limits of 
these antagonists and bring about a lasting treaty of peace 
between them, is the yet unsolved problem of the reformation. 
The reformers attempted to solve it, and strove in vain to 
confine the torrent which they had set in motion, within cer- 
tain dykes of their own construction. The spring-tide of free 
inquiry, not yet perhaps at its flood, is sweeping away their 
barriers, and ages may elapse, before it subsides into its prop- 
er channel, after cleansing the earth of a thousand follies and 
abuses. 

The history of the reformation proves the utter futility of 
those doleful predictions, with which the advocates of estab- 
lished abuses are accustomed to greet every change in the 
forms with which they are familiar. When the advocates of 
Catholic unity beheld a great part of Christendom divided 
and distracted by the multitude of sects which sprang out of 



THE REFORMATION. 161 

the liberty of private judgment asserted by the reformers, it 
seemed to them, and even to the affrighted fancies of some 
doubtful protestants, that the moral world was returning to 
chaos, and that all order, religion, civilization itself, would 
be swept away by the tempest of innovation. But in the 
moral as in the natural world, the utmost apparent confusion 
often conceals, for a time, the most beautiful evidences of the 
wisdom and goodness of God. Indeed the history of the 
reformation is analogous to that of the Christian civilization 
in general — to that of nature in general. Everywhere the 
most glorious results are evolved from the wildest fermenta- 
tion of conflicting elements, when the Providence or Spirit 
of God is moving in the chaos. Everywhere strife and con- 
cord, diversity and unity, change and stability, are the appar- 
ently incompatible, but actually indispensable conditions of 
life, progress, beauty and power. 

Compare those countries, in which the superficial strife and 
essential harmony of Protestantism have at once stimulated 
and regulated the intellectual energies of men, — set them to 
thinking deeply upon the greatest of all subjects, and furnish- 
ed leading principles to guide them in their investigations, 
and put each rival sect under the necessity. of vindicating its 
own claims by superior intelligence and morality, with those, 
in which Catholicism, taking refuge in the arms of civil des- 
potism, has trodden out the last sparks of free inquiry, or 
those in which, as in Mexico and the South American repub- 
lics, spiritual tyranny has survived the overthrow of monar- 
chical institutions. 

The tree is known by its fruits, and now, after the lapse of 
three centuries, we have the data for estimating the exact 
value of the dismal prognostications of the enemies of reli- 
gious liberty. The vindication of the reformation has been 
written out in vast characters by the finger of Providence 
over all this green earth, wherever protestant enterprise has 
14 



162 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM AND 

carried the lights of knowledge and the glories of civilization. 
In old Germany, the mother of nations, where the boldness 
of protestant research has thrown a flood of light upon every 
branch of human learning ; in England, whose mighty and 
exuberant energies are encircling the earth with her laws, 
her lanoruas:e and her literature ; in North America, where a 
great republic, the work almost solely of protestant valor and 
freedom, is overshadowing the rotten offshoots of Spanish 
bigotry ; in the coral isles of the South Sea, where nations 
have been rescued from barbarism and moral death ; in the 
Asiatic continent, where protestant enterprise, with the lights 
of science and the blessings of Christianity, has fearlessly 
followed the British arms, as they battered down the walls, 
that once fenced the millions of India and China from the 
inroads of western civilization ; in the Catholics themselves, 
who are so fortunate as to live in protestant countries, or in 
such social or political connections with them as to be stimu- 
lated into generous emulation of their protestant neighbors, 
we may look for the fruits of the reformation. 

If superstition, with her racks and her fagots, has fled 
before the light of reason ; if the restless daring of experi- 
mental science has extorted the secrets of nature and made 
her the servant of man ; if the conflict of minds has struck 
out new and juster notions of government, of the rights of 
men and the limits of power, of the principles that should 
regulate all social institutions ; if the Bible has become a 
household companion, and the minds of the humblest have 
been expanded by its glorious poetry, its divine philosophy, 
its faithful delineations of human nature, its simple yet sub- 
lime records of the primitive world and of those momentous 
transactions which have shaped the destinies of man for time 
and eternity ; all these things may be traced to that great 
revolution which broke the chains of ecclesiastical despotism. 

Such results of such a cause are in exact accordance with 



THE REFORMATION. 163 

the laws of the human mind. The habits of thinking which 
men form in relation to religion, the most important, and one 
of the most frequently recurring of all subjects, they will be 
apt to carry with them into other departments of intellectual 
activity. All who dislike the trouble and perplexity of think- 
ing for themselves ; all who are willing to surrender the pre- 
rogatives of rationality for the sake of repose, may find it in 
implicit submission to the authority of the church. But such, 
I am persuaded, is not the condition most favorable to the 
highest moral and intellectual attainments in the present 
state of being. It is by struggle and conflict, by painful and 
assiduous wrestling with the mysteries that surround us, by 
fearless, yet reverent investigation of the highest subjects, 
that our moral and mental powers are developed and discip- 
lined. 

Why are Catholics in those countries where Protestantism 
is either in the ascendant, or strong enough to make itself 
respected, so superior in intelligence and morality to their 
brethren in regions where the supremacy of the church is 
undisputed % Because they must think, if it be only to find 
arguments with which to combat their adversaries. Because 
they must vindicate the claims of the church by their moral 
conduct ; for intelligent men will not respect a religion that 
does not improve the moral character of its votaries. This 
effect of the reformation has been felt even in those countries 
which it has never entered, or entered only to be extinguish- 
ed in blood. Catholics ought to erect monuments to Luther 
and Calvin as high as the heavens, for to no other men do 
they owe more in amoral point of view. As Mr. Macauley 
has shown in his able review of Ranke's History of the Popes, 
the re-action of Catholicity against the assaults of the reform- 
ers purified the manners of the clergy, rekindled their devo- 
tion, revived their zeal and energy and gave rise to that sin- 
gular body of spiritual soldiery who, while they have rivetted 



164 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM AND 

the fetters of ecclesiastical despotism, have unquestionably 
done much for scientific discovery and the extension of civ- 
ilization. 

Never was institution better contrived to sustain a 
sinking cause than the Jesuit society. With marvellous 
sagacity, each member was assigned that species of service 
for which he was best qualified by natural gifts and education. 
Not only the offices of the church, but almost every secular 
employment, was filled with Jesuits, whose duty it was by 
any and every means, which ingenuity, sharpened by a thor- 
ough training in all the arts of intrigue, could devise, to 
confirm the wavering, to gain new converts to the faith, to 
enlist in behalf of the church the rank and wealth and power 
of the Christian world. Many of them were universally 
accomplished men, equally at home in the cottages of peas- 
ants, in the workshops of artizans, in the halls of universities 
and the palaces of kings. A profound knowledge of human 
nature, and a general acquaintance with the arts and literature 
of their time ; a burning zeal which no hardships could damp, 
and no difficulties discourage ; a moral heroism which defied 
alike the dangers of hostile courts, the infection of hospitals, 
the malaria of pestilential climates, and the ferocity of sava- 
ges ; a profound dissimulation which baffled the most saga- 
cious statesmen, and the most wily diplomatists ; a contempt 
of good faith, against which, neither the sacredness of oaths, 
the ties of nature and friendship, nor the obligations of 
humanity could furnish any security ; such was the strange 
assemblage of sublime and detestable qualities, that met in 
this extraordinary body of men. 

Their virtues and vices had the same origin. They were 
the faithful soldiers of the church, assailed on all sides by 
hosts of implacable adversaries, and they acted upon two 
maxims : — That the soldier has nothing to do but obey his supe- 
rior, and that all is fair in war. The cause to which they 



THE REFORMATION. 165 

consecrated their lives and undivided energies, seemed to 
raise them above those obligations which rest upon ordinary 
men in ordinary transactions. So mighty and glorious an 
end as the vindication of that faith which involved the eternal 
destinies of man, sanctified any means which might be useful 
for that purpose ; an error into which enthusiasts of all sys- 
tems have fallen. The most wily Jesuit might be not only 
humane and self-sacrificing, but scrupulously just and honor- 
able in all personal concerns, and where the interests of the 
church or of his order did not seem to require an opposite 
course. 

From the middle of the sixteenth century, the reformation, 
by becoming entangled with political affairs, almost lost its 
original character of a great moral revolution. Like every 
other extensive movement of society, it was soon perverted 
into a mere covering of political or personal ambition, and 
the boundary between Catholicism and Protestantism in 
Europe was fixed, as it has remained with little or no change 
for two centuries, much less by reason and moral influence, 
than by wars and treaties and political considerations, grow- 
ing out of the balance of power. So intricate was the 
entanglement of religious with political affairs during the 
thirty years war, which defined the boundary of the two forms 
of Christianity in Germany, that we have the strange spec- 
tacle of Cardinal Richelieu, the merciless persecutor of 
French Calvinism, assisting the protestant hero Gustavus 
Adolphus to humble the Catholic power of Austria. 

It is in the United States alone, that the reformation has 
remained wholly detached from political affairs, and it is here, 
I am persuaded, that one of the great problems of the age is 
to be solved : Whether Protestantism admits of a conservative 
form, which can unite moral jpoicer with freedom of opinion. 
Its general tendency certainly has been more and more 
towards individualism, or anarchy. Sects have been more 



166 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM AND 

and more subdivided, and almost every change has carried 
us a step farther towards the rejection of all authority, and 
the substitution of private illumination for external organiza- 
tion and symbolism; in other words, making every man his 
own judge, in matters of faith, with no bond of union or 
authoritative guidance. For to tell a man to form his own 
opinion from the Scriptures, without furnishing him at least 
with leading principles, is a renunciation of all ecclesiastical 
authority. 

What form of conservative organization may yet be evolv- 
ed from Protestantism, we know not. Perhaps the Catholic 
church itself may, though it is very improbable, gradually 
lower its pretensions to a point compatible with religious lib- 
erty — let fall obnoxious portions of its creed, and approxim- 
ate its adversaries. But power and liberty, in spiritual as well 
as in civil matters, are still antagonists. The battle of the 
sixteenth century is still going on — is even hotter than ever. 
Catholicism is making a tremendous struggle to regain her 
dominion of the human mind. It is becoming apparent that 
unless the champions of religious freedom can unite on some 
generally acknowledged principles, they must be overwhelm- 
ed by a polity, which, for concentrated energy — for many- 
sided adaptation to all the varieties of character— for laying 
hold of and pressing into its service the most powerful prin- 
ciples of human nature, is without a parallel among human 
institutions. In the contest no intelligent lover of liberty 
can be neutral ; for whatever claims the Roman church may 
have upon the gratitude of mankind — however great her ser- 
vices in former ages in the cause of civilization, nothing is 
more certain than that her spirit and internal structure are at 
war with the best tendencies of modern society. 

In the progressive evolutions of the plans of Providence, 
institutions admirably adapted to one stage of society become 
pernicious in another, unless provision is made for such 



THE REFORMATION. 167 

changes from time to time as are demanded by the new dev- 
elopment of social progress. The fundamental dogma of the 
unchanging church has forbidden her to keep pace with the 
progress of society, and she perpetuates in the nineteenth 
century the spirit and maxims of the middle ages, stiffened 
into tenfold rigor by the storms which have assailed her. In 
protestant countries, the worst features of the system are, for 
very obvious reasons, disguised for a time ; but however flex- 
ible she may be in acquiring power, she will be inflexible in 
the use of it. Romanism in its hour of weakness is a very 
different thing from Romanism in its hour of triumph. I do 
not denounce her for being despotic — for doing her best 
to enforce implicit submission to her authority. Upon her 
own principles, she is required to do so by regard for the 
temporal and eternal welfare of mankind. If she did not 
strive to suppress freedom of thought upon the highest of all 
subjects, she would be false to the charge which she believes 
has been intrusted to her by the Saviour of men. History, 
philosophy, the condition of those nations in which the sway 
of Catholicism is undisputed, all proclaim that the system is 
destructive to religious and unpropitious to civil liberty. 
During the middle ages, it is true, republics grew up under 
the shadow of her wings, and the roots of Anglo-Saxon free- 
dom run far back into the same period ; but the reformation 
drove her into an alliance with civil despotism, and the great 
revolutions that have shaken the modern world have only 
increased her aversion to the riotous liberty which has some- 
times threatened her destruction. Freedom of inquiry, 
which she once countenanced, she has learned to dread as 
her most formidable foe. 

Religion is recovering from the blows inflicted by the infi- 
del philosophy of the eighteenth century, and manifesting the 
indestructible life that is in her. The philosophers who pro- 
mised mankind a golden age, under the reign of materialism, 



16S SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM AND 

were astounded to see the passions, which they had set free 
from the restraints of religion, defying also the exorcism of 
reason, and rioting in a carnival of crime and blood. Since 
France awoke from the fever-dream of revolutionary frenzy, 
a powerful re-action has taken place, and enlightened men 
on the continent agree that religion has its eternal foundation 
in the nature of man, and is and ever must be the corner- 
stone of the social fabric. In England, the colossal scepti- 
cism of a Hume and a Herbert, has dwindled down into that 
astonishing socialism of Mr. Owen, which, if adopted by a 
colony of baboons, would doubtless raise the apish commun- 
ity to the height of prosperity and glory. 

But, while most men agree as to the necessity of religion, 
there is more perplexity than ever as to where the truth is to 
bs found. Sects and schisms, and new theories are multi- 
plying on every side. The Christian world is filled with a 
hubbub of contradictory voices. Old formulas are disputed, 
and the ancient records of Christianity themselves are being 
subjected to a fearless criticism, which, for the time being, 
shakes their authority. Dark and fearful is the struggle of 
many earnest souls, who see their old grounds of belief, 
which they had thought firm as the rock-girt foundations of 
the world, swept from under them. 

There are times when chilling doubt or perplexity must 
steal over the mind of the most ardent lover of religion, 
if he be candid and liberal. If he turns from historical evi- 
dences, and questions the heavens and the earth as to those 
high matters which are most deeply interesting to us all, 
he hears only the echo of his own voice, as it rolls away 
reverberating through the mystic halls and shadowy corridors 
of the star-paved temple of immensity, and then all is silent ; 
— a silence more fearful for the feeling heart than the voice 
of doom. When we contrast the poetical belief of the "fer- 
vent days of old, when opinions were things," with the spir- 



THE REFORMATION. 169 

itual condition of the present time, it would seem to us in 
moments of despondency, that the world had waked up from 
pleasant dreams, but had waked up in the dark. As says 
Richter, "yet struggles the twelfth hour of the night; the 
dead walk, the living dream ; Thou Eternal Providence wilt 
cause the day to dawn" 

15 



IV. 

THE ANGLO-NORMANS 



OR 



LA¥ AND LIBERTY 



THE ANGLO-NORMANS, 

OR 

LAW AND LIBERTY. 



The reader will bear in mind, that the first vigorous shoots 
of modern civilization, springing up from the ruins of the 
Roman empire, were sheltered by the church from the north- 
ern tempests. They also experienced the fostering care of 
monarchy, in the persons of Charlemagne and Alfred, and 
bloomed under the culturing hand of a chivalrous aristocracy. 
To recur to a figure already used, these institutions were 
the strong outer coats, which sheltered the germs of modern 
improvement from the storms of the world's spring. But, 
hardened by time and inveterate custom, these wrappages, 
instead of yielding to the expansion of the germs which they 
had protected, began to bruise them and to check their 
growth. 

Meanwhile, a subtle but powerful element began to show 
itself on the surface of society. This was the spirit of liberty 
residing in those municipal corporations, which, buried appar- 
ently under the wrecks of the Roman empire, emerged with 
new and more valuable franchises, in the latter half of the 
middle ages, and in England especially, in that high-spirited 
body of landholders intermediate between the nobles and the 
serfs. This spirit was fostered by the increasing importance 
of the middle classes, as well as the free discursive intellect, 
which began to question the authority of men in matters of. 
faith. The spiritual authority, as we have seen, was first 
assailed by Luther and his colleagues, and driven into a close 



174 THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OR 

alliance with the secular power. Religious and civil liberty- 
then combined for mutual support against the coalition of 
spiritual and political despotism. It was in England that 
the two great antagonisms of modern society first fairly con- 
fronted each other, and the first effective blows were struck 
in that battle between power and liberty, not yet ended, of 
which the English, the American and the French revolutions 
have been the most terrible and bloody encounters. The two 
last struggles I shall reserve for a subsequent work, it being 
my present purpose to trace the progress of society down to 
that remarkable period, when the best products of the Christ- 
ian civilization were transplanted from Europe, where they 
have grown but slowly under the shade of hoary institutions, to 
the forests of the new world, where there are no such unpro- 
pitious circumstances to check their free expansion. 

It is not alone as the vanguard of the host of freedom, in 
its war of two centuries with civil and spiritual tyranny, that 
the Anglo-Normans claim our regard. The greater part of 
the world would seem to have been partitioned by Provi- 
dence between the two great branches of that dominant race 
of men, in the East and West, as a boundless field for the 
extension of their colonial and commercial system, and the 
diffusion of the English language and literature, as well as 
institutions of English origin. The empire of Britain girdles 
the earth ; her colonizing and commercial enterprise outstrips 
her arms and negociations, and the outposts of English civil- 
ization have been pushed forward to the shores of New Zea- 
land, in the south, and the verge of the polar ice in the north. 
The off-shoots of this wonderful race, appointed by Provi- 
dence to be the civilizers and liberators of mankind, which 
only two centuries ago were planted on the Atlantic coast of 
North America, have grown into a mighty nation, which, 
long before it shall have arisen to the full height of its colos- 
sal power, upon a territorial foundation spreading from ocean 



LAW AND LIBERTY. 175 

to ocean, will be throwing the shadow of its greatness and 
the moral power of its institutions backward upon Europe — 
forward upon Asia. 

Everywhere the Anglo-Normans are the torch-bearers of 
religion— science — liberty ; and from shore to shore, from 
mountain-top to mountain-top, through all the ancient realms 
of darkness and habitations of cruelty, new lights are kind- 
ling ; and anon we shall see them flash on high, and run toge- 
ther, and encircle the earth with a glorious illumination. It 
is remarkable that this vast movement has steadily progressed 
through all the vicissitudes of the last century. Indeed the 
philosophical history of that period might almost be simpli - 
fied into two leading facts : the struggle between power and 
liberty, in which the latter has been constantly gaining 
ground, and the contest between the French and the Anglo- 
Saxons for the foremost place in the civilization of mankind, 
in which the latter have as steadily advanced. Even in the 
last and most tremendous conflict between the Celts and the 
Saxons for that post of honor, the genius of Napoleon could 
strike down, one after another, the coalitions which English 
gold armed against him, on the continent of Europe; but all 
his gigantic efforts could not arrest for one hour the march of 
events which was carrying forward the English race to the 
dominion of the world. Surely a people to whom has been 
allotted a part so stupendous in the drama of history, may 
well claim the attention of the philosophic mind. 

If we take a comprehensive survey of the Christian nations, 
we shall find that each has had a share in the providential 
education of mankind, corresponding with the peculiar fea- 
tures of its national character and local institutions. Thus 
Italy is the home of the beautiful arts which refine and ele- 
vate the soul, and not only the works of her great masters, 
but the melancholy recollections of unequalled though 
departed glories, which hover over her majestic ruins and 



176 THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OR 

beautiful scenery, are, to pilgrims from other lands, peren- 
nial sources of the noblest inspiration. From old simple- 
hearted Germany, the mother of us all, have emanated the 
piofoundest speculations in philosophy, and the greatest 
moral revolutions of modern times. It is remarkable that in 
relation to all the deepest matters of speculation, any move- 
ment which stirs the depths of German mind, slowly but 
surely finds its way into every part of the civilized world. 
France is the school of everything in which clearness and 
readiness are more available than depth or ponderous 
strength, and her great capital was once, and is still perhaps, 
to some extent, the centre of European civilization, where 
the raw material of thought, from every part of the world, 
has been worked up by French vivacity into elegant fabrics, 
which, like the religion of Italy, have been chiefly for expor- 
tation. The English have excelled in everything that 
requires good sense and practical sagacity, but, if I am not 
mistaken, the great mission of the Anglo-Saxons is to solve 
this highest problem of political philosophy : the reconciliation 
of Order and Liberty ; in other words, ascertaining by ex- 
perience the largest measure of individual freedom which is 
compatible with justice to all and to each, and what sort of 
institutions are best adapted to harmonize conservatism and 
democracy. 

The physical greatness of England and her colonial off- 
spring, must be chiefly attributed to the fact, that an unusu- 
ally large share of civil and religious liberty has given scope 
for a full and free development of the peculiar traits of the 
national character. These traits are a sturdy practical sense, 
never carried away by paradox or mysticism, and a steady 
energy, sometimes degenerating into sullen obstinacy. It is 
astonishing how long the peculiarities of races are preserved 
in spite of all the physical and moral causes which have 
tended to efface them. In France and Ireland, a mercurial 



LAW AND LIBERTY. 177 

temperament, marked by quickness, vivacity and thoughtless 
enthusiasm, still bears witness to a large infusion of Celtic 
blood. But in England, the Celtic population was almost en- 
tirely rooted out by the Saxons, whose temper was slow, pon- 
derous, yet fierce and overbearing. After the emigration to 
England, the Saxons who remained behind in Germany, 
resisted the proselyting arms of Charlemagne for thirty years, 
and when they could hold out no longer, a large part of them 
preferred exile to an acknowledgement of the sway and 
religion of the conqueror. Retiring into Jutland and Scan- 
dinavia, now Denmark, Sweden and Norway, they, in con- 
cert with the hardy natives of those countries, whose char- 
acter and manners were similar to their own, fitted out 
numbers of small vessels, in which, under the names of Danes 
and Northmen, or Normans, they became the terror and 
scourge of all the coasts of Europe. One body of them 
conquered the southern part of Italy, while another under 
Rollo, a famous chief, after ravaging England for many years, 
extorted from the king of France a large cession of territory 
on the northern coast of that country, where they embraced 
Christianity and founded the dutchy of Normandy. The 
pagan superstitions of these " fair-haired sea-kings " were 
like their minds, rude, gigantic, terrible and well adapted to 
foster a martial spirit. The warrior believed that if he should 
fall in battle, he would be carried immediately to the star- 
paved halls of Valhalla, where, in presence of Odin, the God 
of war, he should sit down to the feast of heroes and drink 
oceans of beer from the skulls of his enemies. By their 
conversion to Christianity, they lost nothing of their martial 
qualities, for the Norman knights were the flower of Euro- 
pean chivalry. So much for the original stock of what is 
commonly called the Anglo-Saxon race. 

The manners and institutions of the Anglo-Saxons before 
the Norman conquest, were similar to those of other Ger- 



178 THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OR 

manic nations. After Christianity had been reestablished in 
England, it was long before its softening influence became 
visible. A ferocious freedom, arising from a lofty sense of 
personal independence, the weakness of the rulers, and the 
rude condition of the laws, filled the country with licentious- 
ness and blood-shed. The most wanton murders were pun- 
ished only by fines proportioned to the rank of the victim. 
Female honor had no security but superstition. The most 
absurd modes of deciding civil and criminal causes were 
prevalent, affording no security for justice, but the means and 
motives for fresh violence and outrage. 

Yet this turbulent society contained all the original ele- 
ments of the present government of England, except the 
feudal system, which was introduced by the Normans, and 
the chartered towns, which, not until long after the conquest, 
acquired sufficient importance to take any share in political 
affairs. It contained monarchy founded on loyalty, with at 
first only a partial recognition of the principle of hereditary 
succession ; the power of the clergy, which was unquestion- 
ably employed in mitigating the ferocity, restraining the 
passions and cultivating the minds of the people; and finally, 
a high-spirited body of independent landholders, of whom 
the higher classes at least, had a share in the deliberations of 
the wittena-gemote or council of wise men, while the inferior 
freemen had the privilege of deciding civil and criminal 
causes in the county courts, in which the greater part of the 
judicial business of the nation was transacted. 

The proceedings of these courts were at first rude and 
summary enough, and the ignorant judges saved themselves 
the trouble of deciding causes of any complexity, by appeal- 
ing to the judgment of God in a variety of modes, the water 
ordeal, the fire ordeal and trial by battle, which gradually 
fell into disuse with the progress of intelligence and the im- 
provement of the laws. The procedure became more regu- 



LAW AND LIBERTY. 179 

lar, and it was found necessary to select from the increasing 
a nd tumultuous body of free-holders who had a right to sit 
on each trial, a smaller and definite number. Here, doubt- 
less, is the origin of that peculiar feature of the English and 
Anglo-American constitutions, trial by jury. 

The Norman conquest, by introducing the feudal system, 
completed the resemblance between English society and the 
English constitution, and those of all the other nations of 
Germanic origin. I have adverted in a former discourse, to 
the freedom of the feudal constitutions. That freedom, the 
source of the liberty we now enjoy in America, was the 
result of the conflicts of different classes of antagonist inter- 
ests and tendencies. A social organization in which a single 
element completely overmasters the others, must degenerate 
into hopeless despotism, or experience terrible concussions 
from the reaction of those forces which, though repressed, 
are not thoroughly subdued. If the haughty barons and pre- 
lates and independent landholders, who sat in the legislative 
assemblies, held each other in check and united against the 
"oyal authority, it was, in general, more for the sake of their 
own privileges, than from any abstract sense of justice and 
equal rights. . Wherever these conflicting tendencies were so 
nearly balanced that neither could gain a decided or perma- 
nent ascendancy, all classes who had a share in government, 
were tolerably secure against the excesses of arbitrary 
power. 

The first great question that presents itself is this : how 
happened it that English liberty survived the general wreck 
of the feudal constitutions, and has gone on steadily expand- 
ing, fortifying itself by additional guaranties, and defining 
more and more clearly the limits of prerogative, while the 
freedom of other countries, similar in its nature and origin, 
has been overwhelmed by the progress of the royal authority % 
This question is, at first sight, rendered still more difficult to 



ISO THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OR 

answer, by the incontestable fact, that for some time after the 
Norman conquest, the English government was the most ar- 
bitrary in Europe. Yet, paradoxical as it may seem, the very 
fact that it was then the most oppressive, will help us to ex- 
plain why it was afterwards the freest. 

I can best illustrate my views upon this point by a brief 
comparison of the constitutional history of England, subse- 
quent to the period I have mentioned, with that of France, 
of which it was, in all respects, the exact reverse. 

While both the nobles and people of England were crush- 
ed to earth by the iron tyranny of the Norman kings, the 
French monarchs possessed little more than the shadow of 
royal authority. France was rather a loose confederation of 
great baronies than a consolidated nation, and however the 
people might suffer from the rapacity of turbulent nobles, 
they had nothing to fear from the power of the crown. In 
point of fact, though there was much disorder and violence, 
there was little positive oppression from any quarter, for the 
freemen were either bold retainers of chieftains who were 
bound to them by reciprocal obligations, or citizens of char- 
tered towns, to whom both kings and barons granted exten- 
sive and valuable privileges, in order to obtain from them 
supplies for their everlasting wars. 

So little jealousy was entertained of the royal authority, 
that the states-general very seldom met, and neither barons, 
land-holders nor citizens, the classes who, together with the 
clergy, composed that body, gave themselves much trouble 
about the central administration. This want of vigilance 
was fatal to their liberties. In their false security they al- 
lowed the kings to raise money for foreign wars and other 
national purposes without the consent of the states-general, 
and thus establish precedents, which enabled them to dis- 
pense with the meetings of that body. With the revenue 
raised by a variety of expedients, or granted by the provin- 



LAW AND LIBERTY. 181 

cial assemblies, which were neither the appropriate nor effi- 
cient guardians of the liberties of the nation at large, the 
monarchs gradually formed a mercenary force, which released 
them from the necessity of calling upon their turbulent vas- 
sals for the short and precarious services of their equally 
refractory tenants. Whenever the executive succeeds in mak- 
ing himself independent of tJie people for his supplies of 
money, there is an end to liberty. As might have been ex- 
pected, the royal authority constantly gained ground, by 
accessions too gradual to occasion alarm ; the great fiefs 
were, one after another, swallowed up ; the meetings of the 
states-general fell into disuse, and after the power of the 
nobility had been broken by a variety of causes, of which the 
crusades were the most efficient, no counterpoise was left to 
the central power, and the French monarchy became one of 
the most despotic that ever existed. 

Far other and more glorious destinies were reserved for 
the English. As I have intimated, the first Norman kings 
were practically absolute. Their power, founded on conquest 
and preserved by their own commanding qualities, derived 
additional security from the mutual hatred of the Norman 
nobility and the English people, for each party supported the 
crown against the other, for the sake of humbling their ene- 
mies, sharing in their plunder or taking vengeance upon 
them. If a free people be so unfortunate as to fall under 
arbitrary power, it is far better that tyranny, instead of 
making insidious and scarcely perceptible encroachments, 
should exhibit itself at once in all its undisguised hatefulness, 
while the spirit of liberty yet lives and burns in the heart of 
the nation. It is better that the disease should do its worst 
before the vigor of the constitution is materially impaired. 

Hence, it must be accounted, on the whole, a fortunate 
circumstance that the Norman kings, sure of the support of 
the barons against the people, and of the people against the 



182 THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OR 

barons, were encouraged to such wanton excesses of arbitrary 
power, that after the distinction between Norman and Saxon 
had been effaced by time, these, at first, hostile classes found 
it necessary to unite against the common enemy. The barons, 
insulted and outraged in their persons, property and families 
by the dynasty which their ancestors had placed upon the 
throne of England, fell back upon the people, whose sturdy 
spirit and attachment to their ancient Saxon liberties, were 
yet unsubdued, and the result of this combination against the 
crown was Magna Charta, the earliest declaration extant of 
the great principles of the English constitution. Before I 
proceed to trace the progress of English liberty, I will men- 
tion one or two circumstances, which had a share in its 
preservation. And first of these is the national character. 

All the nations of Germanic origin were alike remarkable 
for their free and independent spirit. Yet the Anglo-Saxons 
have unquestionably been distinguished by their aptitude for 
free institutions, their unconquerable love of liberty, and the 
practical sagacity with which they have detected the encroach- 
ments of arbitrary power, and clung to the most effectual 
means of resistance. The origin of these peculiar properties 
of English mind, and the manner in which they have been 
perpetuated from generation to generation, are and probably 
will forever remain profound mysteries. 

The light-hearted Frenchman, with a large portion of Cel- 
tic vivacity, is too happy " with his fiddle and his frisk," to 
care much about the affairs of state, or he forgets his chains 
in his enthusiasm for the national glory. A skilful ruler, by 
taking advantage of this enthusiasm, may induce him to over- 
look the greatest usurpations. Not so with sturdy John 
Bull, who would rather be miserable in his own way, than be 
made happy by arbitrary power. He has a sullen jealousy 
of his rights, not the least of which is the right of grumbling. 
He watches the proceedings of those in power with the 



LAW AND LIBERTY. 183 

sleepless vigilance of discontent, and his somewhat coarse, 
thousfh vigorous sense secures him from the illusions of the 
imagination, and forms just notions of the nature and value 
of the practical safe-guards of liberty. 

A great advantage which England has enjoyed in regard 
to the preservation of her liberty is her insular position, which, 
with her naval power, has secured her, with one or two ex- 
ceptions, from actual invasion by a foreign foe. When a 
generous people behold their executive struggling with an 
insolent invader, they look with indulgence upon usurpations 
which may seem necessary to vindicate the national honor, 
and protect their own fields and firesides from the horrors of 
war. If such exigencies are frequent, the usurpations, which 
they induce the people to connive at, ripen into permanent 
acquisitions of executive power. Had Charles levied his 
taxes without the consent of the commons, to drive a foreign 
enemy from the soil of England, even the inflexible Puritans 
might have submitted to the encroachment. For this reason 
a powerful navy, or a strong line of frontier defences, are 
important to a nation that would preserve its freedom. 

With these preliminary considerations, I shall proceed to 
answer the great question propounded above, by a brief out- 
line of English constitutional history. 

After two or three generations had effaced the distinction 
between the Norman barons and the Saxon people, between 
the conquerors and the conquered, they bes^an to see the 
necessity of uniting against the intolerable tyranny which 
had grown up from their mutual animosities. They united 
upon the basis of the original laws and liberties of the Anglo- 
Saxons, modified by the feudal relations introduced by the 
Normans, but never completely naturalized. The feudal 
system never supplanted the independent allodial tenure in 
England, to as great an extent as in France and other por- 
tions of the continent. The Norman feuds were peculiarly 



184 THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OR 

burdensome, but it happened fortunately for the English peo- 
ple, that the feudal burdens pressed most heavily upon the 
barons, who were tenants in capiti, or immediate vassals of 
the crown. The kings exercised their rights of wardship 
and marriage in the most rapacious manner. Their female 
wards of the most illustrious families, were actually sold to 
the highest bidders. Relief and all other feudal exactions 
were enforced with merciless vigor. 

Grievances of a more general nature had spread disaffec- 
tion through the mass of the people. Whole villages, and 
vast tracts of cultivated country were laid waste and convert- 
ed into deer parks for the exclusive benefit of the royal hunt- 
ers and their favorites. Justice was publicly sold. The 
most exorbitant fines were paid for the redress of injuries, 
and even for the free exercise of the most ordinary privileges, 
We are told of one hapless wight who paid a heavy fine for 
being allowed to eat. Such tyranny must have wrought its 
own ruin in any country, where the spirit of liberty was not 
wholly extinct. 

Yet such was the overbearing energy of the Norman bas- 
tard's iron-handed race, that it was not until the reign of the 
contemptible John, who surpassed his predecessors in wan- 
ton tyranny almost as much as he fell below them in vigor 
and sagacity, that any effectual effort was made to set bounds 
to arbitrary power. The barons and prelates were now no 
longer the foreign favorites of a tyrant, but a constituent por- 
tion of the English nation. In their transactions with John, 
they seem to have felt that they, as chiefs and leaders of the 
people, were charged with the vindication of the rights of all 
classes. 

The establishment of Magna Charta was without doubt 
one of the most pregnant epochs in the history of mankind. 
The principles, which then for the first time were reduced to 
a definite declaration of rights, and received the solemn sane- 



LAW AND LIBERTY. 185 

tion of all powers of the state, had doubtless been obscurely- 
maturing in English society, fronvthe time of the Saxon em- 
igration. The coral insect and the hidden fires of earth 
work silently for ages before a new isle is heaved up from 
the sea to become the home of men, and a shelter for the mari- 
ner. The great Charter of Anglo-Norman freedom is an is- 
land in the ocean of time, where the labors and progress and 
unquenched and unquenchable fires of forgotten generations 
reached the surface, and raised aloft upon its mountain ram- 
parts those landmarks of liberty, which, amidst the clouds 
and storms of after ages, were never wholly lost sight of. 

It differs from another famous paper more immediately 
interesting to Americans, in its freedom from the abstraction 
of political philosophy. There is no declaration of natural 
rights, no attempt to set forth an ideal of society or govern- 
ment. Though comprehensive, it is altogether practical. 
The rights which it asserts are set forth not as the rights of 
men, but as the rights of Englishmen, and grounded not 
upon natural law, but immemorial prescription. This some- 
what narrow and altogether practical character, so different 
from the absoluteness, the vague generality of French declar- 
ations of right, runs through all the great monuments of Eng- 
lish liberty, and corresponds with the character of the Eng- 
lish people. The Anglo-Americans seem to me to have com- 
bined the peculiarities of the English and French schools of 
politics, being broader than the former, more specific and 
practical than the latter. 

The great charter provided specifically for the security of 
all classes of the people. Its more comprehensive clauses 
set forth clearly the great practical guaranties of freedom and 
equity, that no freeman should be damaged in person or es- 
tate, except by the judgment of his peers and the law of the 
land, that justice should be done without sale, denial or delay, 
that no aids or escuages(the usual and most oppressive forms 
16 



186 THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OR 

of taxation ) should be levied without the consent of parlia- 
ment. There is but one exception to the general equity of 
this paper. The king was permitted by his own authority to 
levy certain taxes upon the towns, which in England were 
then far inferior to the chartered cities upon the continent in 
wealth, population and franchises. It was not till ages of in- 
cessant conflict between the king and the legislature had elaps- 
ed after the execution of Magna-Charta, that the great princi- 
ple of parliamentary taxation, the most important safeguard, 
nay the very citadel of liberty, was extended to every mode 
of raising revenue. 

The discontent of the English with the Norman govern- 
ment, and their vague desires for the restoration of their old 
Saxon laws and liberties, now settled down to attachment to 
this great and solemn declaration of rights, which reduced to 
precision and certainty their hitherto fluctuating notions of 
the constitution. Here, at last, was laid a firm foundation for 
the glorious edifice of constitutional liberty. For many 
years afterwards, the parliament made it an indespensable 
condition of granting a subsidy to a new king, that he should 
solemnly confirm the great charter, and the clergy employed 
all their spiritual power to enforce its observance. 
The execution of the great charter was soon followed by an 
improvement in jurisprudence and the administration of jus- 
tice. The old customs of the Anglo-Saxons, modified by the 
feudal principles brought over by the Normans, among whom 
were found not only the most gallant knights but the sharp- 
est lawyers in the world, began to acquire consistency and 
regularity, and to expand into that system of rules and pre- 
cedents called the common law, — one of the most important 
bequests of the Anglo-Normans of the old world to their 
descendants in the new. 

An eminent English judge has said, that as great ob- 
scurity rests upon the sources of the common law, as upon 



LAW AND LIBERTY. 187 

the fountains of the Nile. Though, theoretically, it consists 
of immemorial customs or lost statutes, it is in a great mea- 
sure, as a learned American jurist has remarked, a vast body 
of judicial legislation. The adherence to precedent has 
been by no means so close as to prevent the English judges 
from engrafting upon the common law new, and more liberal 
principles under cover of ancient forms and usages. 

As might have been expected among a people remarkably 
tenacious not only of their political privileges, but of their 
private rights, and who were now, by one of the most im- 
portant provisions of the great charter, entitled to look for a 
prompt and impartial administration of justice, free from the 
former vexatious interferences of arbitrary power with the 
proper functions of judicial tribunals, decisions rapidly ac- 
cumulated ; and the increasing extent and complexity of the 
laws made it necessary to fill the highest judicial offices, not 
with ecclesiastics, as heretofore, but with professional law- 
yers. This class of men, on account of their number, ability, 
and the interest which the people of England and the United 
States have always taken in the administration of justice, 
have acquired in those two countries a far more commanding 
position in society than in any other communities, either an- 
cient or modern. That influence in general has been un- 
doubtedly favorable to liberty. 

Demosthenes compared the Athenian orators to watch- 
dogs guarding the temple of national independence, and 
giving warning to the people of approaching danger. In 
like manner, the English and American lawyers, filled with 
the ideas of established right and venerable precedent, and 
accustomed to the keenest discriminations, are the beao-les of 
liberty, who scent encroachments of executive power, abuses 
of judicial discretion and unconstitutional legislation. Hea- 
ven knows their bark is sometimes vociferous enough. 

The able and honest lawyer deserves a very high place in 



188 THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OR 

society. Identified, at least in England and the United 
States, at once with freedom and conservatism, he mav be 
not only the champion of private rights, but' the guardian of 
public liberty. He may be the fearless sentinel at the gate 
of the inner sanctuary of the temple of Justice, guarding the 
spotless majesty enthroned within from the rude intrusion of 
arbitrary power or popular phrenzy. What nobler specta- 
cle than the moral hero, who, profoundly versed in the laws 
and constitution of a free country, stands up for right and 
justice, unawed by the frowns and unseduced by the bland- 
ishments of power ; defying alike the mandates of despotism, 
the clamors of faction and the insolence of demagogues. 

The jurisprudence of England and Anglo-America is less 
indebted to the Roman law than that of any other Christian 
nation. This circumstance has been favorable to liberty, for 
the civil law, as I have remarked, though admirably adapted 
to the regulation of society, as well as the speedy and equit- 
able redress of injuries, is despotic in its origin and spirit, 
and for that reason the free Anglo-Saxons have ever looked 
upon it with jealousy. The evils, growing out of the technical 
inflexibility of the common law, are part of the price of liberty. 
While power must be entrusted to very imperfect men, it is 
necessary that its limits should be clearly defined and rigor- 
ously maintained ; that the course of public functionaries 
should be marked out by plain and unbending rules, leaving 
as little room as possible for the exercise of discretion. A 
system of polity favorable to public liberty, may be too 
inflexible for the perfect attainment of the ends of private 
justice. Hence, we find among the Anglo-Normans a sepa- 
rate and strictly limited equity jurisdiction, hobbling along 
after the courts of law, and affording a partial relief from the 
hardships which they are compelled to inflict. As the chan- 
cellors were at first ecclesiastics, who were partial to the civil 
and canon law, it is in the chancery system that we must look 



LAW AND LIBERTY. 189 

for the chief influence of the Roman upon the English juris- 
prudence. We may hope that the progress of society may 
weaken and finally remove all good grounds for the unnatural 
divorce of freedom and equity. 

The equality of all freemen before the law has always been 
one of the chief glories of the English and Anglo-American 
constitutions. Even in the middle ages, though the incidents 
of the feudal tenures were peculiarly oppressive in England, 
the barons never possessed those enormous privileges, inclu- 
ding an exemption for their families as well as themselves 
not only from the public burdens, but from the ordinary 
criminal jurisdiction, which they enjoyed in other parts of 
Europe. If the members of the House of Lords could be 
tried only by their peers, their sons, as far back as we have 
any knowledge in relation to the matter, were subject to 
precisely the same civil and criminal jurisdiction, with pre- 
cisely the same rules cf procedure, as the humblest freeman 
in the land. With some slight exceptions, it may be said 
the English law has been no respecter of persons. Even 
the royal family was not above the law. Every one will 
recollect the anecdote of Gascoigne sending " Prince Hal " 
to prison for a contempt of Court. It is easy to see how 
this legal equality must have contributed to keep alive among 
the people that self-respect and high spirit, which are among 
the chief sources and surest safeguards of freedom, without 
which indeed all constitutional guaranties are little better 
than so much waste paper. 

In the latter part of the thirteenth century, the constitution 
and powers of parliament emerge from the cloud which rests 
upon their earlier history. 

As I have had occasion to remark, among all the nations 
of Germanic origin, the whole body of freemen had a right 
to be consulted in all important matters, and no new r taxes 
could be levied without their consent. After the establish- 



190 THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OR 

ment of the feudal system, the legislative assemblies in gen- 
eral, consisted of what were called the three estates, that is to 
say, of the barons, the clergy and the free-holders. The nat- 
ural supposition is, that the English constitution was similar 
in this respect to those of other nations of similar origin and 
circumstances. When the number of free-holders became 
very large, representation was a very obvious substitute for 
the personal attendance of the whole body. 

As the progress of the arts, of manufactures and of com- 
merce increased the wealth and importance of the cities and 
boroughs, from which a large proportion of the revenue was 
raised, it was only carrying out a leading principle of the 
feudal constitutions, that no taxes can be imposed without the 
consent of those who are to pay them, to extend to them a 
share in the national legislation. The student of parliamen- 
tary antiquities first reaches a firm historical footing in the 
year twelve hundred and sixty-five, when a great baron, the 
earl of Leicester, having defeated and taken prisoner Henry 
the IV., summoned a parliament consisting not only of 
bishops and barons, but of the representatives of counties, 
cities and boroughs, for the purpose of giving a color of legality 
to his own revolt and settling the affairs of the kingdom. 
Whatever may be thought of preceding ages, there is no 
doubt that from that time the house of commons has formed 
a constituent part of the national legislature. 

Such was the constitution of parliament, when Edward 
I. succeeded his father, Henry IV., on the throne of England. 
The reign of Edward was a memorable and critical era 
in the history of constitutional liberty. It was now to be 
determined whether the principles of the great charter, 
which had been extorted from a pusillanimous prince and 
confirmed by his feeble successor, could be maintained 
against a haughty monarch, equal perhaps to any man that 
ever lived in courage, decision and sagacity, and who, more- 



LAW AND LIBERTY. 191 

over, was scarcely seated on the throne before he gave the 
clearest tokens of a determination to make his own will the 
law of the nation. His high-handed measures soon roused 
a spirit of resistance. 

The barons were on this, as on many other occasions, the 
powerful guardians of popular rights. It was a critical 
period, for the result of a struggle with a ruler of such saga- 
city and overbearing energy as Edward, is usually decisive. 
In such cases, unsuccessful resistance only confirms the 
power which it had striven to shake. The triumph of the 
king might have been an irretrievable overthrow of liberty. 
Happily for us, happily for mankind, the parliament came 
out victorious from the struggle, chiefly by taking advantage 
of a fortunate accident. The king was engaged in a foreign 
war, which he could not abandon without disgrace and mor- 
tification, and his ordinary revenue having been exhausted, 
he was compelled to apply to parliament for the means of 
carrying it on. That body refused to supply his wants, ex- 
cept upon condition of his not only confirming the great 
charter, but relinquishing his prerogative of raising money 
from the towns and tenants of the royal domains, without 
their consent. The king held out for a time, but the parlia- 
ment being immoveable, he at last yielded, and that great 
principle was fully recognized and established, that no taxes 
can be laid upon the people without the consent of their 
representatives, a principle which has been the bulwark of 
English liberty, and the immediate cause of the American 
revolution. 

It seems doubtful whether the legislative powers of the 
house of commons, at first, extended beyond the single func- 
tion of laying taxes, though they might certainly petition for 
redress of grievances. It is easy to understand how their 
power over the revenue, the life-blood of the state, might be 
usee! for drawing to themselves the control and supervision 



192 THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OR 

of the entire administration. With the sound practical sense 
for which the English are remarkable, the commons perfect- 
ly understood the force and value of the lever, which their 
power over the revenue placed in their hands, and never 
relaxed their grasp upon it for a moment. Before the time 
of Edward, we have seen the barons and prelates taking the 
lead in defence of popular rights. From that memorable 
period they recede into the background, and the commons 
begin to stand forth as the champions of liberty and the great 
constitutional counterpoise to the royal authority. 

I have elsewhere remarked that order and liberty imply 
conflict of different tendencies, and can be perpetuated in 
union only by the preservation of a certain balance of those 
antagonisms. If we attain to a ri^ht understanding of the 
relations between the crown and the parliament of England 
during the middle ages, we shall not be surprised to find that 
the reigns of the most violent and extravagant princes were 
signalized by the greatest advances of constitutional freedom. 
The reign of Richard the Second was a case in point. He 
was by no means destitute of ability. On the contrary, in 
some critical junctures of his life, he showed an intuitive 
sagacity and prompt, decisive energy, which only rendered 
his vices and follies more glaring by the contrast. He was 
tyrannical and extravagant, and wasted the substance of his 
people upon worthless favorites and frivolous amusements, 
The patience of the commons was exhausted by his incessant 
demands for money, and at length they impeached his prime 
minister, and appointed commissioners to superintend the 
expenditures of his household, and reform the abuses of the 
administration. This measure gave rise to a desperate strug- 
gle between the crown and the parliament, which resulted in 
the deposition and death of the king. 

In this contest, the commons not only preserved but ex- 
tended their control over the national treasury, by establishing 



LAW AND LIBERTY. 193 

a right to direct the application of the money which they 
voted, and hold the king's fiscal officers to a strict accounta- 
bility. They also confirmed, by new precedents, their power 
of impeachment, and their right to exercise a general super- 
vision over the executive administration. 

It must not be supposed that these important powers of 
the popular branch of the legislature were, when recognized 
by the monarchs, so thoroughly engrafted in the constitution, 
that the commons could safely rest upon the ground they had 
gained, and relax their vigilance in reliance upon the con- 
cessions of faithless princes, who were sure to seize the first 
opportunity of resuming those prerogatives which had been 
wrested from them. Amid the incessant fluctuations of 
power in those semi-barbarous ages, the principles of liberty 
could be preserved only by the untiring vigilance and uncon- 
querable obstinacy of their guardians for many successive 
generations. The statutes of parliament were drawn up af- 
ter the close of the session, from rough and unskilful drafts 
of resolutions and petitions, by persons who often ignorantly 
or wilfully perverted their meaning. It was not until some 
time in the fourteenth century, that the legislature adopted 
the practice of introducing their laws in the shape of bills, 
which were engrossed under their own inspection, and when 
signed by the king could not be changed. But even this 
important change was not found an effectual safe-guard 
against the devices of arbitrary power. Most of the Planta- 
genet princes were in the habit of suspending statutes, of 
dispensing with their application to particular individuals or 
places, and sometimes, encouraged by a turn of political af- 
fairs which seemed favorable to their own prerogative, they 
would retract all their concessions, and bid defiance to the 
authority of the legislature. 

From these causes it often happened that the commons, 
after having toiled and battled through a long session for 
17 



194 THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OR 

some great principle, would find at their next session that 
their whole work was to be done over again. When we see 
these men, drawn from the high spirited middle classes of 
England, standing up under the greatest discouragements, 
generation after generation, the stern, sagacious and uncon- 
querable champions of popular rights ; when we see them 
battling for ages against arbitrary power, as if the eyes of all 
their mighty posterity were upon them, we are constrained 
to say, surely the finger of God is here. 

The civil dissensions of the Roses were rather favorable 
than otherwise to the progress of liberty. The deposition 
of princes and frequent changes of dynasty destroy the pres- 
tige of legitimacy, and place the possessor of a tottering 
throne under the necessity of finding new foundations and 
props for his power in the love and confidence of his people. 
The remark applies, however, only to countries in which 
the people know something of their rights and are sensible 
of their value, not to such states as the Roman empire and 
the oriental nations, in which the masses, sunk in apathy and 
having no weight in government, are merely passive specta- 
tors of changes effected by foreign force, or by pretorians 
and janizaries. In nations where the spirit of liberty is alive 
among the people, the moral resources of arbitrary power 
are much impaired, when an imbecile or tyrannical prince 
is dragged down from a throne, which the superstitious and 
servile had surrounded with the unapproachable majesty of 
divine right, and power even for a time falls into the hands 
of the horn rulers of men, whose talents and virtues are a 
passport from heaven to the high places of authority. In 
England, while the general principle of hereditary succession 
has remained unshaken, it has been regarded, not as confering 
an indefeasible right, but as the constitutional and most con- 
venient mode of designating the chief magistrate. The 
throne has never been held so sacred, except by a few servile 



LAW AND LIBERTY. 195 

minions of power, as to place the person of its occupant be- 
yond the reach of the parliament and the people. 

At the termination of the wars of the Roses, the powers of 
the popular branch of the legislature were almost as exten- 
sive, though not so clearly defined nor so well understood as 
at present. From the time of Richard the Third, the last of 
the Plantagenets, no organic change has taken place in the 
English constitution. The vast progress since that period 
has consisted of expansion, clearer definition, and the remo- 
val of anomalies. 

It was clearly established before the accession of the Tu- 
dors, that all money bills must originate in the house of com- 
mons ; that members could not be arrested during their atten- 
dance upon pai'liament except in case of treason or felony ; 
that the freedom of speech could not be abridged ; that the 
assent of the commons was necessary to all laws; that the 
representatives of the people had a right to enquire into the 
conduct of the administration, to bring the king's officers be- 
fore them to render an account of their doings, to impeach 
his ministers, and, finally, in concert with the house of lords 
to fix the succession of the crown, and exercise a general su- 
pervision of the affairs of state in peace and. war. 

Here was laid a broad foundation of constitutional liberty, 
provided the elective franchise were sufficiently extensive to 
make the house of commons a proper exponent of the pop- 
ular will. In relation to this point, it appears from a statute 
of Henry the Fourth, that all freemen without distinction had 
a right to vote in the elections of county representatives, but 
long afterwards in the time of Henry the Sixth, the right of 
suffrage was restricted to freeholders possessed of land, to the 
value of forty shillings. In cities and boroughs all freemen 
had a right to vote, but in most of the former the elections 
were actually made by the corporate authorities. The bor- 
oughs seem to have regarded their representation in parlia- 



196 THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OR 

ment as a burden rather than a privilege, and some of them 
were so remiss that the house of commons was under the ne- 
cessity of resorting to strong measures to compel them to 
hold elections and return the members they were entitled to. 
The care which was taken by the legislature to preserve to 
them a franchise which they valued so little, could only have 
arisen from regard to that great fundamental principle that 
taxation and representation are inseparable. 

While the forms of a free constitution were thus settled 
upon a foundation unshaken by all subsequent revolutions, 
strange to say, the life, liberty and property of the subject 
never were so insecure as under the last Plantagenet prin- 
ces. The monarchs, the powerful barons, and lawless associ- 
ations somewhat similar to our Lynch tribunals, took advan- 
tage of the defective administration of justice and the ano- 
malies that adhered to the constitution to gratify their rev- 
enge, ambition and rapacity. The noblest institutions were 
perverted into engines of the vilest tyranny. The "lion of 
March" Edward the Fourth, while giving a fresh impulse to 
the commercial and manufacturing greatness of England, 
found judges and juries servile enough to make themselves 
the instruments of his furious passions. Indeed, the judicial 
system was by far the most defective portion of the constitu- 
tion. The judges held their offices at the will of the king* 
One of the anomalies to which I have alluded was the court 
of Star Chamber, which, though utterly at war in its princi- 
ples and forms of proceeding with the spirit of the constitu- 
tion, continued, as we shall see, to exercise its arbitrary jur- 
isdiction as late as the time of Charles the First. 

At the conclusion of the civil wars, the people were weary 
of bloodshed and outrage, and even arbitrary power, if it 
brought peace and security, seemed preferable to the rage of 
faction and the license of plunderers. Nothing is more cer- 
tain than that the forms of a free constitution are no security 



LAW AND LIBERTY. 197 

against actual tyranny, if those who are charged with the 
defence of popular rights relax their vigilance and slumber 
on their posts. The actual administration of the English 
government under the Tudor dynasty bore, in some particu- 
lars, the aspect of an eastern despotism rather than of a con- 
stitutional monarchy. The parliament, secure in its own 
powers and privileges, sunk into apathy, and readily granted 
whatever the executive was pleased to demand. Judges and 
juries were the pliant tools of arbitrary powei\ The church, 
which had been fiercely assailed by Wickliffe and his disci- 
ples, whose doctrines had been suppressed by the royal 
authority, threw all her weight into the scale of her powerful 
ally. 

The princes of the house of Tudor had no inducement 
to invade the powers and privileges of the other departments 
of the state. They used them as pliant tools, and deluded 
the people, by disguising the substance of oppression under 
the forms of liberty. They had no motive to levy taxes 
without the consent of the commons, when they could obtain 
from that now pliant body as large supplies of money as they 
wanted, without being troubled with those demands for re- 
dress of grievances which, in former times, had always been 
made the indispensable conditions of subsidies. Juries and 
courts of justice only registered the edicts of oppression* 
The clergy, as we have said, were now on the side of des- 
potism, for they began to feel that their moral power was so 
much impaired as to stand in need of support from the secu- 
lar authority ; the mass of the people were still too ignorant 
and superstitious to have much weight in public affairs ; the 
gentry and nobility, the only classes from whom any resist- 
ance to arbitrary power could have been expected, had been 
almost destroyed daring the bloody contests of the Roses, 
either on the scaffold or the battle-field. 

Yet, it must not be overlooked that the tyranny of the 



19S THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OR 

Tudors was of that sort which did not reach the great body 
of the people. The lightning fell not upon them, but upon 
the tall heads immediately around the throne. It was of no 
great concern to the toil-worn peasants and thrifty burgesses, 
as they gossipped over the news, in the bar-room of the vil- 
lage ale-house, that Henry had cut off his wife's head, or that 
Elizabeth had sent Raleigh to the Tower or Essex to the 
block. It was perhaps the period when our mother-land 
best deserved the title of " merry England," on account of 
the comfort and happiness prevalent among the middle and 
and lower classes. 

It was also a period, the latter part of it at least, of won- 
derful intellectual development. The abyss of political deg- 
radation was overarched by an unequalled blaze of literary 
glories. A Bacon, whose strength and breadth of wing bore 
him to that lofty and lonely pinnacle, from which, to vary 
somewhat the figure of an elegant writer, he caught the first 
rays of the rising sun of knowledge, while damps and dark- 
ness still covered the world below ; the universal Shakspeare, 
whose genius was an epitome of the human race, the central 
and loftiest figure in a group of dramatists, either of whom 
might have been the first in any other age or clime. But 
moral and political degradation can be only gilded, not re- 
deemed, by intellectual glories. When man becomes fully 
conscious that he has a right to the free exercise of all those 
high faculties which God has given him, subject only to the 
eternal obligations of the Divine Law, the most paternal des- 
potism, though adorned by the wonders of art, and encircled 
by a blaze of literary genius, is a galling yoke. 

We now approach a mighty era in the history not only of 
England but of mankind. Though the soul of liberty seemed 
to have departed at the accession of the Stuarts, the forms of 
a free constitution were preserved, until the progress of 
knowledge, the increasing numbers, wealth and influence of 



LAW AND LIBERTY. 199 

tlie middle classes, but especially the stern and daring spirit 
of Calvinistic dissent, breathed into them new life, and cjave 
the first decisive impulse to that terrible revolutionary spirit, 
which in England trampled upon kings and nobles, and af- 
terwards gave birth to the American democracy ; which has 
shaken all the thrones of Europe, and swept over the earth in 
the fiery whirlwind of Napoleon's victories ; has regenerated 
society by a baptism of fire and blood, and sent pale Fear into 
the palaces of kings, through triple guards and crowded ante- 
chambers, to write on the innermost wall the doom of tyrants. 

Though the history of mankind is a web where all events 
are linked and intertangled to some extent, there are certain 
critical eras which fix our attention, and when we contem- 
plate them in all their manifold relations, — all the vast and 
ever-expanding movements to which they have given rise, 
we are constrained to believe that if their transactions had 
fallen out otherwise than they have done, the condition of 
mankind would have been altogether different from what it 
is. Perhaps no circumstance in all modern history has told 
with more powerful effect upon the present condition of the 
world, than the peculiar direction which was given to the 
reformation in England. 

The Court of Rome seems never to have possessed as 
much power in England as in other parts of Europe. Even 
the national clergy were objects of distrust to the government 
and the people, on account of their dependence upon the 
Holy See. From time to time, as far back as the twelfth 
century, we see this hostility to the usurpations of the church 
bi-eaking out in various forms ; in Henry's famous contest 
with Becket; in the indignation of the barons and the people, 
excited by John's abject submission to the Pope; in the 
measures by which Edward I., humbled the clergy with the 
approbation of those very commons who so sturdily resisted 
all his other high-handed proceedings ; in the statute of pro- 



200 THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OR 

visors, forbidding all persons to hold ecclesiastical benefices 
in England by presentation from the court of Rome ; in the 
suggestion which the commons made to Henry IV., and 
renewed to his great son, to confiscate the revenues of the 
clergy to the use of the crown; in many other measures, such 
as the statutes of mortmain, tending to restrain the rapacity 
of the ecclesiastics, and put a stop to the perpetual drain by 
which the papal court impoverished the nation. 

The doctrines of Wickliffe were widely diffused among 
the middle and lower classes of the people in the times of 
Henry IV., and his son, the victor of Azincour, and though 
suppressed, during the reign of the latter, by the secular arm 
at the instigation of the clergy, they had served to stimulate 
inquiry and weaken the authority of the church. It is re- 
markable, that the parliament which passed the severe laws 
against heresy, under which the disciples of Wickliffe were 
treated with merciless rigor, was the same that renewed to 
"Prince Hal," as stated above, the proposition which they 
had made to his father, to confiscate the enormous revenues 
of the church. This may seem a strange contradiction, but 
it throws some light upon the connection between religion 
and the state in England. Heresy, or dissent from the estab- 
lished faith, was punished, not so much as a spiritual, but as 
a civil offence, because the practical English, with their 
worldly shrewdness, looked much more than any other peo- 
ple, to the temporal advantages of religion as a support of 
order and good government. Provided the essentials of 
Christianity were preserved, theology was a branch of the 
public service, entrusted to a particular class of men, who 
were to be moderately paid like other officers of the state, 
and whose functions ought not to be interfered with, any 
more than those of other departments. Dissent was, there- 
fore, an injury to society, which was interested in preserving, 
not so much the abstract purity, as the unity and vigor of the 



LAW AND LIBERTY, 201 

moral power. This fact may serve to explain the facility, 
so surprising to every attentive reader of the history of the 
English reformation, with which, not only the government 
officials, but the great body of the people followed their rulers 
and the clergy in their religious changes. The thrifty bur- 
gess, or fox hunting squire, would as soon have thought of 
questioning the decision of one of the highest judicial tribu- 
nals, upon a case manifestly within the sphere of its jurisdic- 
tion, as of dissenting from the action of those who were paid 
for taking care of religion, upon forms of worship or disputed 
points of theology. 

In Germany and France, the reformation was chiefly a 
revolt of the people themselves, headed by their spiritual 
teachers, and the civil power merely protected or persecuted 
the new opinions. But in England, it was at first the work 
of the government itself, and was, in fact, but the substitution 
of a new form of tyranny over the minds and consciences of 
men. Every body knows how the lust of Henry VIII., the 
eagerness of courtiers to share in the plunder of religious 
houses, the time-serving policy of Cranmer, and the arbitrary 
power of Elizabeth, founded and built up that strange med- 
ley of worldly hypocrisy, primitive piety, political prostitu- 
tion and venerable learning, called the Protestant church of 
England. 

It was an attempt, and a partially successful one, to build 
up around the throne, a new spiritual power, more servile 
and tyrannical than the old. The human mind had just burst 
the chains which had bound it for ages. It had scarely begun 
to rejoice in its new found freedom, when a systematic effort 
was made to rivet them anew. For a time, as I have intima- 
ted, even the body of the people implicitly followed their 
spiritual guides. But the English court and the higher ranks 
of the clergy, after spurning the authority of the ancient 
church, reckoned without their host, if they imagined that 



202 THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OR 

their new establishment could long command the respect 
which had been yielded to that venerable fabric, upon whose 
hoary battlements the mysterious flight of ages had shed from 
their " cloudy wings" the mementoes of departed glories. — 
The proportions of the new structure were marred by rem- 
nants of the Gothic edifice of popery, which suited their new 
location, about as well as the drawbridge and donjon keep 
of an old feudal castle would suit the trimness of a modern 
country house. To the astonishment of those high dignitaries 
in church and state, who thought themselves entitled to dic- 
tate the faith of the nation, and enforce conformity with their 
own opinions by the most execrable tyranny, there were 
many thinking men who presumed to doubt the divine com- 
mission of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth. There were some 
who were bold enough to teach what they believed to be the 
truth, at the risk, not only of suspension from ecclesiastical 
functions and the loss of preferment, but of heavy fines, im- 
prisonment and even death at the stake. 

It was impossible for the court to repress by the most 
intolerant enactments, that bold spirit of inquiry which their 
own measures had awakened. They had broken up the 
fountains of the great deep of popular mind, and then pre- 
sumed to say to its rising surges, " thus far shalt thou come 
and no farther, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed." 
They soon found that they were usurping the prerogative of 
Omnipotence. Wider and higher rolled the wave of free 
thought, until the throne and the church began to rock upon 
the verge of the frightful abyss into which they finally sunk. 

Even before the death of Elizabeth, a large party had 
adopted the severe doctrines and republican institutions of 
Calvin. This party, after the accession of the Stuarts and 
the union of the crowns of England and Scotland, rapidly 
gained strength. Their resistance to spiritual tyranny nat- 
urally drew along with it hostility to that civil despotism, 



LAW AND LIBERTY. 203 

which was the close ally and main prop of a persecuting 
church. 

In France, the great body of the people continued steadfast 
to the Catholic church, and the Protestants, after a long and 
bloody struggle, were finally crushed. Germany was near- 
ly equally divided between Catholic and Protestant states, 
which were engaged in furious wars, until the treaty of 
Westphalia established upon the foundation of mutual toler- 
ation, the religious peace which has ever since subsisted. 
Everywhere on the continent, freedom of opinion was either 
decidedly victorious or utterly prostrate, and when the first 
rupture took place between Charles and his parliament, 
England was the only country in which an internal conflict 
was still vigorously maintained between ecclesiastical author- 
ity and religious liberty. 

At the accession of the unfortunate house of Stuart, the 
moral and intellectual activity of the people subject to their 
rule, began to be clearly enlisted on one side or the other of 
the two great antagonisms of modern society — arbitrary 
power, claiming the sanction of divine right, and residing in 
the crown and its powerful ally, the church, on the one hand ; 
on the other hand, liberty, developing itself in the kindred 
forms of free and fearless inquiry on religion, the highest of 
all subjects, and of sturdy opposition to civil despotism, which 
was so closely allied to spiritual tyranny, that the enemy of 
one was also the assailant of the other. The Scottish Pres- 
byterians, by their rupture with Charles, had the honor of 
sounding the first war cry in that conflict, which has made up, 
in a great measure, the history of the Christian world for the 
last two centuries. 

The history of the Stuart dynasty illustrates the old saw, 
that "whom the Gods have determined to destroy, they first 
make mad." The first symptoms of revolt — the first mutter- 
ings of the approaching storm, were heard in the reign of 



204 THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OR 

James the First. This monarch, with all his ludicrous and 
disgusting weaknesses, combined with his useless learning, 
no small portion of the proverbial shrewdness of his coun- 
trymen. His political errors had their source in a delusion, 
very common to arbitrary princes — an exaggerated estimate 
of his own power. In that favorite maxim of his, " no bish- 
op, no king," there was a spice of sense, a glimmering of 
prophetic meaning. Acting upon this maxim, he strove to 
force conformity with the forms and discipline of the church 
of England, upon the stern and uncompromising Presbyte- 
rians of his native country. His failure, and the portentous 
character of the resistance he encountered, ought to have 
taught him the folly of bequeathing to his unfortunate son 
that preposterous enterprise, as one of the first moment to 
the security of his throne. 

The views of Charles in this respect seem to have coin- 
cided entirely with those of his father. With a sincere 
attachment, no doubt, to the English establishment, which 
retained, so much more than any other form of protestantism, 
the spirit and forms of that ancient church to which his fam- 
ily always showed a strong leaning, he had also found it a far 
more servile and convenient ally of arbitrary power, than 
the republican Calvinism of Scotland, which, indeed, was the 
object of his peculiar and unconquerable aversion. While 
he was attempting to force Episcopacy upon the Presbyter- 
ians, Laud, with the approbation of the Court, was making it 
still more distasteful to them and all other dissenters, by a mis- 
erable pantomine of the pompous ritual and arrogant preten- 
sions of the Catholic church. Every one will recollect the chief 
stages of that memorable contest, in which the high-handed 
measures of the king forced the Presbyterians to draw the 
sword in defence of their religious liberties. That clash of 
steel in the North resounded through the British islands. It 
was the signal for those who had watched, with ill-suppressed 



LAW AND LIBERTV. 205 

discontent, the civil usurpations of the crown, to arise and 
gird themselves for the conflict with arbitrary power. 

Four distinct parties, representing as many different ten- 
dencies of society, may be seen in the progress of the English 
revolution, to the successive stages of which, each, in its turn, 
gave form and pressure. 

First, the high-church, high-tory party, whose sincere, 
but blind loyalty inculcated a superstitious veneration for the 
person and prerogatives of the Lord's Anointed, and implicit 
submission to the authority of the church. This party was 
the most solid support of the throne, and included nearly all 
the royalists, who were to be found among the rural gentry 
and substantial yeomen. 

Then there was the party of aristocratic states?nen, weak 
in numbers, but strong in talents and experience, and com- 
prising such men as Strafford and Falkland and Hyde — the 
representatives in that age of the race of accomplished poli- 
ticians who, resting upon oligarchical power, and giving it 
their support in turn, have exercised such vast influence 
upon the political fortunes of Europe. Admitting, at first, 
the existence of abuses and the necessity of reform, they 
finally adhered to the crown, either from love of office or 
dread of popular license. Had Charles consistently followed 
the wise, yet energetic counsels of these men, he might have 
satisfied the great body of the nation, and disappointed the 
republican enthusiasts. 

On the side of the Parliament, the Presbyterians, who at 
first took the lead in the struggle with the Court, were in favor 
of carrying out the idea of the English constitution, by abol- 
ishing certain anomalies which went far to neutralize its most 
glorious principles ; by hedging the royal authority within 
limits, already defined by innumerable charters and prece- 
dents ; by fortifying with new and more effectual guaranties, 
the privileges of the commons, and the rights of the people. 



206 THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OR 

They were also in favor of introducing into the church, a 
more liberal and popular form of government. The leader 
of this party was the illustrious Hampden, who, in the bal- 
anced vigor of his mind, his practical wisdom, and the absolute 
subordination of his passions and impulses to duty and prin- 
ciple, bears a most striking likeness to our own Washington. 

In the rear of the Presbyterians, came that stern and ter- 
rible phalanx, which was destined to overwhelm all the other 
parties, for when the old social order is once broken up, the 
most fiery and thorough-going enthusiasm is sure to gain the 
ascendancy, heaving up with itself the lower strata of society, 
to the summit of the revolutionary chaos. This party was 
chiefly composed of Puritans, with a sprinkling of free- 
thinkers and visionaries, and represented by such men as 
Vane, Cromwell and Harrington. This party was for estab- 
lishing on the ruins of the throne and the altar, a purely 
republican polity, both in church and state. 

As has been remarked in substance, by one of the greatest 
writers of this or any other age, the Puritans were, in some 
respects, the most extraordinary body of men that ever ap- 
peared upon earth. A surface of rock and ice concealed the 
fires that were to shake the world. The intense ardor of 
fanaticism was disguised by an austere deportment, — exalted 
by lofty principle, — disciplined by the coolest judgment, — 
guided by the profoundest sagacity, — supported by an iron 
courage and decisive energy, which overwhelmed the proud- 
est chivalry of the age. 

The great actors in the English contrast favorably with 
the leaders of the French Revolution, and show the wonder- 
ful vigor of the Anglo-Saxon character, under the discipline 
and culture of law, religion and liberty. Indeed, for sound 
judgment, lofty disinterestedness, heroic constancy, inflexible 
adherence to principle, just notions of liberty and good gov- 
ernment, combined with unswerving loyalty to the majesty 



LAW AND LIBERTY. 207 

of law and justice, we know not where to look in continen- 
tal history for exact parallels to such men as Hampden, 
Elliot, Marvel, Milton, and other illustrious champions and 
martyrs of English liberty. They can be matched only on 
this side of the Atlantic among a kindred people. Even the 
slandered Cromwell, compared with most of those heroes 
who have built up their own power upon the ruins of ancient 
institutions, deserves, at least, a part of the eulogy we have 
bestowed upon his compatriots. We think that the English 
and American revolutions fully justify the remark, that to 
the Anglo-Norman race has been allotted the glorious mission 
of reconciling order and liberty, and teaching mankind the 
science of government. 

In stirring periods, the new tendencies of society manifest 
themselves, not only in action, but in literature, and find their 
representatives in men of burning words as well as men of 
heroic deeds. If the two chief stages of the English revo- 
lution found each its greatest representative among men of 
action in Hampden and Cromwell respectively, the purest, 
the least perishable tendencies of the whole mighty movement 
became an incarnate word in the great Poet, who, rapt by 
the inspirations of his genius " far above this visible diurnal 
sphere," drew the sustenance of his own interior life from 
that fountain of heavenly radiance, where, to use his own 
glorious imagery, the eagle of liberty feeds his everlasting 
youth. With prophetic glance, freer, wider, more searching 
than that of any of his contemporaries, he discerned clearly 
the eternal principles which linked the transient topics of that 
day with the highest interests of humanity in all time to come. 
He knew the value of the outworks of liberty, yet the con- 
test about ship-money, and most other subjects of dispute 
between Charles and his parliament, were, to his mind, merely 
the body of the revolution, of which freedom of conscience, 
of speech, of the press, was the soul. 



208 THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OR 

Such were the men, who were the first in the modern 
world to unfurl the standard of civil and religious liberty, 
and proclaim in the ears of an awakening people " resistance 
to tyrants is obedience to God." They had seen their Pro- 
testant brethren on the continent struggling desperately for 
freedom of conscience, and in danger of being crushed by 
the civil authority in alliance with the church. At home, a 
church nominally reformed, but far more servile and quite as 
despotic as the papal, was supported by the king in its in- 
tolerable tyranny. If they turned to the civil administration, 
they beheld a similar spectacle of arrogant despotism and 
abject slavery. The king was raising money by his own 
authority, in utter contempt of a fundamental principle of the 
constititution, — resorting to forced loans and other illegal 
expedients for dispensing with the meetings of parliament, 
— pampering worthless and insolent favorites with the sub- 
stance of an outraged people, and spurning the most humble 
petitions for redress of grievances. The judicial business of 
the country was drawn into two tribunals, the Star Chamber 
and High Commission courts, whose rules of procedure, ut- 
terly at war with the free spirit of the common law, gave them 
absolute control of the life and property of the subject. 
While the glorious principles of constitutional liberty, which 
had been extorted by the firmness, and watched over by the 
vigilance of former parliaments, were lying entombed in the 
musty repositories of state papers, a profligate court was sit- 
ting like a vampire upon a prostrate people, sucking its blood 
and heedless of its sufferings. 

While the terrific elements of revolution were blackening 
the whole horizon with the portents of the tempest, which 
was to demolish the throne and desolate the country, Charles 
and his worthless favorites were disporting themselves in 
the little spot of sunshine that still surrounded the court. 
That unfortunate prince had been taught from his cradle to 



THE REFORMATION. 209 

entertain the highest notions of the royal prerogative. He 
was surrounded by men, who either sincerely believed or 
servilely professed the doctrine of implicit submission, which 
was inculcated by the clergy of the established church. With 
such a training and no great original powers of mind to raise 
him above the narrow prejudices of his education, he was 
deficient in all those qualities, except personal courage, 
which were demanded by the crisis it was his destiny to 
encounter. Nothing could have saved him but a judgment 
clear of all prepossession, a well-limed mixture of concession 
and firmness, and, above all, sincerity and good faith in his 
dealings with his parliament and people. 

His actual character and conduct were almost the exact 
reverse of all this. His favorite advisers were such persons 
as the vain, haughty and violent Buckingham, the weak bigot 
Laud, and his queen, who, educated in the despotic court of 
France, was utterly ignorant of the spirit and character of 
the English people. When finally awakened from his dream 
of absolute power, he knew not when to yield, nor when to 
resist, nor how to do either. The concessions extorted from 
him by the parliament which procured his assent to the 
" Petition of Right," were made so ungracefully, with such 
reservations, and with so evident an intention to retract them 
whenever he might be able to do so, that instead of allaying, 
they only inflamed the popular discontent. By violating, in a 
short time after the parliament had dispersed, every solitary 
provision of that great instrument — the second Magna Charta 
of English liberty, to which, for the purpose of obtaining a 
supply of his urgent pecuniary wants, he had given his solemn 
though reluctant sanction, he put it out of his own power 
ever again to claim the confidence and respect of his people 
or their representatives. 

The majority of the long parliament, of which Hampden 
was the leader, assembled evidently with a firm determina- 
1S 



210 THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OR 

tion to effect a thorough and permanent reform. The com- 
mons began this great work by a searching investigation of 
abuses and grievances, all of which were condemned by res- 
olutions, to which Charles was obliged to give his assent. — 
They then proceeded to still bolder measures. They im- 
peached the king's ministers, condemned the illegal expedients 
to which he had resorted to raise money without their con- 
sent, abolished the courts of High Commission and Star 
Chamber, and provided that the judges should no longer 
hold their offices at the pleasure of the crown but during 
good behavior, thus establishing that great principle of judi- 
cial independence, which, in England and America, has 
guarded the temples of Justice alike from the seductions of 
patronage and the passions of the multitude. To all these 
measures the king was under the necessity of giving his 
reluctant assent. 

From the fact that the parliament was not contented with 
these concessions, some writers have inferred that the popular 
leaders were actuated by selfish or factious motives. But 
they were men of too much firmness and sagacity to do their 
work by halves. They had before them the example of the 
former parliament, who had relied upon the solemn sanction 
which the king had given to the Petition of Right. They 
had seen him trample upon every solitary provision of that 
solemn declaration. After such an instance of perfidy, it 
would have been madness to trust the liberties of the nation 
in the hands of a faithless tyrant. They wisely resolved 
never to disperse until they had disarmed him of the power 
to render all their labors abortive. 

Between a haughty and perfidious monarch, yielding to the 
pressure of imperious necessity, but determined to resume 
his obnoxious prerogatives on a favorable occasion, and a 
parliamentary majority, sagacious, intrepid and firmly resolv- 
ed on a durable reform, a rupture was inevitable. It forms 



LAW AND LIBERTY. 211 

no part of my plan to enter into details in relation to the im- 
mediate causes of that rupture, or the events of the civil wars 
in which the stern enthusiasm of the Round-heads, guided by 
the consummate skill and decisive energy of Cromwell, over- 
whelmed the fiery chivalry that rallied under the royal stan- 
dard. 

Here for the first time, all Europe, accustomed to the 
dogma of divine right, was astounded by the spectacle of 
the monarch of a great people, arraigned at the bar of his 
subjects, and tried, condemned and executed for violations of 
the fundamental laws of the nation. If we take into consid- 
eration the prejudices of the age; the lofty, serious and 
intrepid character of the judges; the circumstances of the 
prisoner — the representative of a long line of powerful prin- 
ces — himself a haughty, fearless and vindictive tyrant; the 
nature of the charges which were based upon the high and 
unprecedented ground, that a king is as much bound by the 
laws of his country, as the humblest of his people ; we must 
regard the trial of Charles Stuart as one of the most striking 
and imposing spectacles that the world has ever witnessed. 
It was the first and most impressive of the lessons, by which 
power has been taught its limits and its duties in the modern 
school of revolutions. The trial and execution of Louis the 
Sixteenth, was but a poor parody of that solemn tragedy, 
which the French Jacobins aspired to imitate. 

The reign of Charles the First must be looked upon as the 
most important period in the history of constitutional liberty 
before the revolt of the American colonies. I will briefly 
sum up the chief reforms and permanent advances of the 
cause of freedom, by which it was signalized. 

First, the Petition of Right, the second Magna Charta, 
reiterates and confirms the most important provisions of that 
famous instrument, and besides condemns every form of 
illegal taxation, prohibits the quartering of troops upon the 



212 THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OR 

people, and carefully provides for the security of personal 
liberty, by declaring that no freeman, who sues out the writ 
of habeas corpus, shall be detained in custody by virtue of 
any special warrant from the king or his council. As this 
paper received the sanction of Charles, though perfidiously 
violated by him, it remains one of the great monuments of 
the English constitution. 

Next, in order of time, are triennial parliaments, bringing 
popular opinion to bear at shorter intervals, upon the affairs 
of the state ; the abolition of the courts of High Commission 
and Star Chamber; and the establishment of the judicial ten- 
ure of good behavior, which raised the judges from that 
slavish dependence upon the crown which had often rendered 
them the servile tools of tyranny. 

Finally, the deposition and execution of the king shivered 
into fragments that blind idolatry of the person and preroga- 
tives of the Lord's Anointed, which had been inculcated by a 
prostituted church. From that moment the moral props of 
arbitrary power, founded in opinion and prejudice, were 
sapped, and thinking men, everywhere, began to whisper to 
themselves and to each other, that power is a trust for the 
benefit of the governed, who have a right to cashier their 
rulers for a flagrant abuse of their delegated authority. 

That men might have full leisure to reflect upon all the 
astounding facts and changes they had witnessed, and an op- 
portunity of contrasting the imbecile sway of the scions of a 
corrupt dynasty with the vigorous and enlightened adminis- 
tration of one of the horn rulers of men, the protectorate of 
Cromwell arrested, for a time, the tendency of English soci- 
ety, in accordance with a law of revolutions, to return to its 
old channel. To do justice to the motives of Cromwell, 
and of those incorruptible champions of freedom, such as 
Milton, who were in favor of entrusting the chief executive 
authority to the iron-handed chieftain, we must take an im- 



LAW AND LIBERTY. 213 

partial view of the state of affairs after the death of the king. 
A large party of royalists, exasperated by defeat and shocked 
by the execution of their master, were bent upon restoring 
the old order of things. It would have been madness for 
those who had suffered and labored so much in the cause of 
civil and religious liberty, to place themselves at the mercy 
of this exasperated and remorseless faction. Those dreadful 
disorders of society which always follow in the train of civil 
wars, required a prompt and efficient remedy. Scotland and 
Ireland were torn to pieces by internal convulsions. The 
foreign relations were in the worst possible condition, from 
the want of a representative of the national sovereignty, who 
could command the respect of the continental powers. 

These circumstances convinced all rational men, who were 
unwilling to restore the old dynasty, and thus rivet anew the 
chains which had just been broken, that a clear eye and 
strong hand were needed at the helm of state. However 
important it may be in general, to adhere to the regular forms 
of constitutional government, every nation is subject to vio- 
lent and critical disorders, which require the prompt applica- 
tion of extraordinary remedies. Nor is it matter of regret, 
that such men as Cromwell are at hand, who can rule the 
storm, and do not shrink from the terrible responsibilities of 
such emergencies. 

He well knew the peril and obloquy which he incurred. 
He knew that his station would be no bed of roses, but a 
pillow of thorns. To no one, perhaps, is mere power so 
much an object of desire, that he would be willing, for its 
possession, to sacrifice almost everything else that man holds 
dear upon earth. Nor is it always a virtue to prefer the 
peace and security of private life to the perils and responsi- 
bilities of high office in troublous times. We see no reason 
why a man, who finds himself surrounded by disorders, 
which require prompt and energetic measures, if he feels 



214 THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OR 

that sublime, because well-founded, self-reliance, which has 
distinguished the master spirits of the world, should not take 
upon himself the perilous, and often thankless task of re- 
organizing society. 

The Protector fully vindicated his estimate of his own 
powers by the results of his sagacious and energetic policy* 
Arraigned at the bar of European opinion, he pleaded his 
own cause in a voice which resounded through the civilized 
world, and drowned the poor treble of his miserable libel- 
lers. Liberty of conscience was secured, outrage suppress- 
ed, justice impartially administered, peaceful industry pro- 
tected, insurrection crushed and the insolence of foreign na- 
tions effectually humbled. 

How wearisome are those men, who blinded by prejudice 
can see little else than fanaticism or hypocrisy in the hero, 
who, after spending the greater part of his life as a plain far- 
mer or obscure member of the commons, formed an army, and 
conducted it with a skill which is usually the result of mili- 
tary education and long experience ; who, after overthrowing 
in the field the brilliant chivalry of the king, and bringing 
the head of the tyrant to the block, found himself in a situa- 
tion of peril and responsibility which would have crushed 
any ordinary mortal. Having to contend at once with a mu- 
tinous army, a factious parliament, the unrelenting hatred of 
a powerful party, and the unbridled insolence of foreign ag- 
gression, this wonderful man, with a lofty purpose which no 
discouragements could shake, a prompt and overbearing en- 
ergy which no opposition could withstand, a sagacity which 
no intricacy could perplex, and a penetration that no dissim- 
ulation could baffle, while with one hand he crushed insur- 
rection at home, with the other swept the Dutch navy from 
the seas, humbled Spain, made France the unwilling instru- 
ment of his purpose, and raised England to a height of glory 
which she had never reached under the greatest of her mon- 
archs. 



LAW AND LIBERTY. 215 

Yet with all its glories, the commonwealth must be looked 
upon as a sort of parenthesis in the progressive evolution of 
the idea of the English constitution. It was a temporary 
remedy for a desperate disease. It had no root in the past, 
nor any vital connection with the main stem of prescription 
and social development. The appearance of life which had 
been given to it by the genius and energy of the first Crom- 
well, utterly vanished during the feeble administration of his 
son. It was an interval of sunshine after the storms of the 
revolution, which gave time for the principles of liberty, agi- 
tated in that contest, to take such deep root in the popular 
mind, that the profligate tyranny of the restored dynasty 
could not crush them, nor prevent their giving birth to the 
revolution of sixteen hundred and eighty-eight. 

At this point, the plan of this work requires that I should 
bring to a close my brief sketch of English constitutional his- 
tory. I will briefly recapitulate the causes, which have mainly 
contributed to the preservation and progress of Anglo-Nor- 
man liberty in the Old world, before it was transplanted to 
the New. 

Free institutions, upheld by a lofty spirit of personal inde 
pendence, were common to all the Germanic tribes, and in 
this respect the Anglo-Normans could claim no decided su- 
periority over other nations of the same origin. It is not to 
be overlooked however that in England the population was 
wholly Germanic, the Celts having been rooted out by the 
fierce and indomitable Saxons, while in France, Spain and 
Italy, the German tribes were merely the ruling class in the 
midst of large Romance populations, in whom the spirit of 
liberty had long been extinguished by subjection to the Roman 
empire. The conflict between antagonist elements of polit- 
ical organization was more vigorous and protracted in Eng- 
land than on the continent, and as that peculiar sense of 
equilibrium or aversion to the absolute, which seems to be 



216 THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OR 

inherent in the Anglo-Norman race, would never permit 
any of the political forces to gain a permanent ascendancy, 
their struggles resulted in the compromises of the constitu- 
tion. This result was favored by the insular position of Eng- 
land securing her from foreign invasion, which, on the conti- 
nent, induced the people to connive at illegal taxation and 
other excesses of arbitrary power, that seemed necessary to 
defend their own fields and firesides from the rapine and in- 
solence of a foreign enemy, — still further, by the peculiar 
turn given to the reformation in England, which, at an early 
period, arrayed the champions of free inquiry and liberty of 
conscience against a spiritual tyranny, founded and support- 
ed by the state, but undisguised by any of those venerable 
associations which enabled the Catholic church to maintain 
her grasp upon the moral feelings and imaginations of men ; 
and, finally, free inquiry and the republican institutions of 
Calvinism, starting up in opposition to the civil despotism, 
which was the formidable enemy of both, infused new life 
and vigor into long settled but almost forgotten principles 
and gave birth to that terrible revolution which cemented 
with blood the foundations of constitutional liberty. 

Through all the phases of England's political progress, 
we discern a singular tenacity of ancient rights and privi- 
leges, a stubborn resistance to the encroachments of one de- 
partment of the government upon another, a strong aversion 
to the speculations of political idealists, and a distrust of all in- 
novations, which could not be readily engrafted upon the tree 
of prescription, without either violently lopping any of its 
branches, or injuring those roots which were buried in the 
strong soil of Saxon antiquity. The strong practical sense 
of the English shows itself in aversion to extremes and to the 
absolute in every form. For this reason no people have suc- 
ceeded so well in reconciling movement with conservatism, 
in combining the spirit of improvement with a rational vene- 



LAW AND LIBERTY. 217 

ration for the past. To this fact we must mainly ascribe the 
remarkably solid, durable and expansive character of her 
civilization. 

I shall not attempt at present to trace the rise and pro- 
gress of the commercial and maritime greatness of England, 
— the main-spring of that mighty movement, which has 
turned the haunts of savages and wild beasts into abodes of 
refinement, intelligence and freedom ; kindled the lights of 
knowledge upon the shores of Australia and the oriental 
islands ; founded a new empire in India, upon the ruins of 
the magnificent dynasty of Tamerlane ; battered down the 
wall of exclusiveness that fenced the millions of China from 
the inroads of western civilization, and is still, with ever- 
increasing velocity, diffusing the English language, laws and 
literature to the farthest bounds of the green earth. That 
movement is the most stupendous fact of modern history, 
and might suggest boundless speculations on the future. 
One is tempted to imagine that the Anglo-Norman race has 
received from Divine Providence a fee-simple conveyance of 
this planet, with the appurtenances thereunto belonging. 

Of the streams of life which have issued from that reser- 
voir of nations, the mightiest has taken its way through the 
forests and over the prairies of North America, bearing up- 
on its bosom a political argosy freighted with the hopes and 
destinies of man. Little more than two centuries after the 
first feeble colonies were planted upon the Atlantic coast, 
their descendants are pouring through the defiles of those 
snow-capped mountains, which throw their morning shadows 
upon the placid bosom of the South Sea. 

We cannot but regard it as a singularly providential cir- 
cumstance, that the permanent settlement of Anglo- America 
was postponed to that remarkable period, when the fetters of 
the human mind having been broken, a spirit of inquiry had 
s^one abroad, and th<* great battle between power and liberty 
19 



218 THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OR 

had commenced. The American offspring of England may 
be said to have been born from the first throes of that great 
revolution which quickened the life-blood of the mother 
country with the spirit of liberty. To carry out the figure, 
the robust infant was cast out into the wilderness and left to 
the care of nature, and it soon found the use of its own limbs, 
without the aid of its parent. 

The circumstances of the Spanish settlements were precise- 
ly the reverse. At the time they were made, Spain was the 
first nation and greatest military power on earth. But her 
government was an absolute despotism in church and state. 
Under the gloomy and bigoted Philip the Second, the last 
sparks of free inquiry were trodden out in blood. From 
such a society, bands of daring adventurers went forth, thirst- 
ing for gold, and, carrying the cross before them, conquered 
the fairest and most populous portions of America. They 
were supported by the vast military power of the parent 
country, from which a haughty aristocracy and persecuting 
church were transplanted to the new world. 

The settlers of Massachusetts and Virginia brought with 
them the love of freedom which was reviving in England. 
Some of them, indeed, had the best possible reasons for 
hating tyranny. From their new homes in the western 
world, they saw their brethren who had remained in the 
mother country, struggling for civil and religious liberty. 
They saw a corrupt hierarchy crushed, a haughty nobility 
humbled, and the head of a perfidious monarch brought to 
the block, for trampling upon the rights of the people. Some 
years afterwards they saw another prince of the same infat- 
uated dynasty, hurled from the throne, and the great princi- 
ple at least partially recognized, that all power is a trust for 
the benefit of the governed, who have a right to take it away 
from those who flagrantly abuse it, and confer it upon others 
who are able and willing to perform its duties. 



LAW AND LIBERTY. 219 

The English constitution was still encrusted by many un- 
sightly anomalies, some of which have not, to this day, been 
removed. But the principles of liberty, which in England 
were checked and stunted, first by military ascendancy, and 
then by ancient institutions, encountered no such unpropitious 
influences in America. There was no necessity for a large 
military force to protect .the colonists from the few naked 
savages who roamed through the forests, and if there had 
been, such a force could not have been spared by either of 
the contending factions of the mother country. There was 
nothing to tempt the nobility and prelates to the wilds of 
America. The settler, familiar with the rude grandeur of 
nature, could have none of those servile feelings, which, in 
Europe, were fostered by long established social distinctions, 
but trod in the wilds which he was subduing, with the free 
step and erect port of the conscious lord of creation. His 
mind, developed by the labors and perils of laying the foun- 
dation of a new empire in the wilderness, was free, original, 
fearless, self-relying, like the mountain eagle, cradled on the 
crag and rocked by the tempest. 

Yet he was by no means, cut off from the life-giving past. 
If he had left behind him the army, the aristocracy and the 
church, the three props of arbitrary power and ancient 
abuses, he brought with him all that was adapted to his new 
circumstances. He brought with him all that glorious legacy 
of former ages, which the nobility and clergy had helped to 
preserve and transmit, before the people had become suffi- 
ciently enlightened to take charge of it themselves. He 
brought with him the common law, the trial by jury, the 
habeas corpus, parliamentary legislation, the division of the 
legislature into two bodies, holding by different tenures and 
acting as checks upon each other, judicial independence ; 
and that great principle, the impregnable outwork of liberty, 
which requires the consent of the representatives of the 



220 THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OR 

people to the imposition of taxes, and appropriations of 
money. Besides all this, he brought with him the intellectual 
treasures, which, first emerging from the darkness of remote 
antiquity in the poems of Homer and the literature to which 
they gave birth, have been constantly accumulating down to 
the present time. Last, but not least, he brought with him 
the Christian religion, in the freest and purest form then 
known. The vast arrangements of Providence, steadily ma- 
turing through the vicissitudes of ages, have at last brought 
together a complete provision for the complex nature of man. 
American society, then, may be regarded as the net product 
of tlie whole fast, eliminated from those terms which, though 
useful in working out the problem, must be cancelled to ob- 
tain the result. The stream of ages, in passing the Atlantic, 
has deposited the rubbish of dilapidated institutions. The 
plants, which had drooped under the shade of crumbling 
fabrics that once sheltered them from the wintry blasts, trans- 
planted to a rich and unencumbered soil, may spring aloft 
into the heavens and overshadow the world. 

I may be considered an enthusiast for avowing the belief 
that the Anglo-Normans, especially the American branch, are 
destined to be the pioneers and teachers of mankind in the 
science of civil government. They seem to me singularly 
qualified for this glorious part in developing the plans of 
Providence. I have adverted to the moderation and practi- 
cal sense, the aversion to the extremes of political idealism, 
which are characteristic of the English and their American 
descendants. These qualities were exhibited in a striking 
manner in the organization of the American government. 
Our constitution was a compromise, not only between slave- 
holding and non-slaveholding societies, — between centraliza- 
tion and state rights, — but also between progress and con- 
servatism. The American statesmen did not, like the French 
Jacobins, aspire to build a political edifice out of flimsy 



LAW AND. LIBERTY. 221 

abstractions of their own spinning. They did not attempt to 
create, but merely to construct, with material ready to their 
hands. With principles as old as Magna Charta, institutions 
to which the people had long been accustomed, and the new 
equality growing out of the peculiar circumstances of Amer- 
ican society, they went to work in a spirit of compromise, 
and constructed a glorious temple of constitutional liberty. 

The moderation and sense of equilibrium, of which we 
have ascribed a larger measure to the Anglo-Saxons than 
any other race, were conspicuous in the character of Wash- 
ington, who, like many other great men, was the highest 
example of the predominant traits of his countrymen. His 
mind has been underrated on account of the unparalleled 
equipoise of its faculties. Nothing stands out in bold relief 
to arrest attention and strike the imagination. There is even 
an appearance of tameness in the complete subordination of 
his passions to his judgment and sense of duty. Yet his 
soul was colossal, and grows upon us the more it is contem- 
plated. His character was not the cloud-piercing Gothic 
spire, but the symmetrical dome, which if lower and less 
striking, is more solid and enduring. Its key-stone was that 
steadfast adherence to principle which allowed no selfish pas- 
sion for a moment to disturb the singleness of his purpose, 
nor any misfortune to shake his calm resolution. 

But I find myself encroaching upon subjects which I wish 
to reserve for another work of a less summary character 
than the present. I hope hereafter to complete my view of 
the philosophy of history by tracing the progress of society 
through what may be called the age of revolutions, from the 
beginning of our own struggle with England down to the 
year 1815, when the last remnant of Napoleon's gigantic 
power was annihilated on the field of Waterloo, and noticing 
the most remarkable men, both of action and speculation, who 
have been connected with the movements of that stirring 
period. 19* 



222 THE ANGLO-NORMANS, OK 

Finally, if to be called a Roman citizen was once an honor 
greater than royalty itself, what honor, what responsibility 
must attach to the citizen of the Anglo-American republic ! 
When we take into consideration the peculiar and interesting 
character of their political institutions, the restless activity, 
sound judgment and over-mastering energy with which the 
Anglo-Normans are pushing the triumphs of their intellect 
and enterprise in every part of the world, we think we are 
justified in placing that wonderful race of men in the van of 
Christian civilization. At no distant period the island moth- 
er must be overshadowed by the greatness of her offspring, 
for the power of England is singularly artificial. It has a 
very narrow territorial foundation in comparison with many 
of her colonies. It is a pyramid propping the heavens and 
overshadowing the earth, but resting upon its apex instead 
of its base, and upheld by the financial skill and far-reaching 
sagacity which have presided in her councils. The American 
republic is the mightiest of her progeny, and if its union and 
liberty are preserved, the sceptre of that stupendous intel- 
lectual empire, of which the English language will be the 
bond of spiritual union, must be transferred from England to 
the United States. 

The westward progress of empire and of the centre of civil- 
ization has often been the subject of remark. It would 
seem that in the long day of man's existence upon earth, the 
point of meridian glory, like that of the solar day, is destined 
to make the circuit of the globe. From Persia to Greece, 
from Greece to Italy, from Italy to the Franks in France and 
Germany, from the Franks to Spain, from Spain to England, 
and may not the next transfer be from England to America % 
When passing the Pacific, it once more reaches the primeval 
seats of the human family may be the appointed time for the 
Recording Angel to close the volume of this world's history. 

But we have better grounds than fanciful analogies for a 



LAW AND LIBERTT. 223 

prospect so pleasing to our national pride. No one of com- 
prehensive mind can look at the Mississippi valley, with its 
dependent fringes of territory on the Atlantic and Pacific 
coasts, without being ready to exclaim with an English tour- 
ist — " If anywhere on earth the Almighty himself has marked 
out the seat of empire, surely it is here." In fertility, re- 
sources and extent of commercial facilities, no other region 
on earth can compare with it for one moment, except per- 
haps the basin of the Amazon, and there the minds and 
bodies of the people must be enfeebled by the incessant heat 
of an equatorial climate, while here there are no physical caus- 
es which can tend to deteriorate the most active, sagacious and 
energetic race of men that the world ever saw. Here, per- 
haps, human intelligence is to reach its loftiest earthly mani- 
festations. Here are to be solved many of those great prob- 
lems which involve the future destiny of mankind. Here 
civilization may attain its most glorious triumphs, if we give 
to^genius, wisdom and learning their due regard ; if we place 
virtue and intelligence above wealth and office ; if we pre- 
serve that only true liberty which is consistent with a lofty 
morality, with wholesome laws — with justice to all and each ; 
if we look back upon the mighty past, not with self-compla- 
cent contempt, but with that discriminating veneration which 
may take warning from its errors and emulate its greatness ; 
if last, though not least, we cling to that most precious of all 
its legacies, of which the cross is the seal and the Bible is 
the record, duly attested by the Providence of God. 



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